Transformations in modern architecture

Arthur Drexler

Author
Drexler, Arthur

Date

1979

Publisher
The Museum of Modern Art: Distributed
by New York Graphic Society

ISBN

087070608X

Exhibition URL
www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1773

The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history—

from our founding in 1929 to the present—is
available online. It includes exhibition catalogues,
primary documents, installation views, and an
index of participating artists.

MoMA © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art

TRANSFORMATION
IN MODERNARCHITECTUR

UR DREXLERTHEMUSEUMOF MODERNART• NEW YORK

m LVw
 TRANSFORMATIONS
IN MODERNARCHITECTURE
ARTHURDREXLER

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART,NEW YORK

Front cover: John Portman & Associates. Renaissance

Center, Detroit, Mich. 1971-77. Photo: Timothy Hursley/
Balthazar Korab Ltd.
Front flap: Langdon & Wilson, Architects. CNA Park
Place, Los Angeles, Calif. 1968-71.
Inside front cover: Left: Manteola, Petchersky, Sanchez-
Gomez, Santos, Solsona, Vinoly. Headquarters, Bank of the
City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. 1968. I
Right: Welton Becket Associates. Hyatt Regency Hotel and
Reunion Tower, Dallas, Tex. 1973-78. Photo: BalthazarKorab DISTRIBUTED
BYNEW YORKGRAPHICSOCIETY,
BOSTON
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Acknowledgments Contents

The exhibition on which this book is based took place at The Museum of Modern Introduction 3
Art, New York, from February 23 through April 24, 1979. The exhibition was
made possible through the generous support of The Graham Foundation for Sculptural Form
Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the PPG Industries Foundation. Brutalism 18
I am especially grateful to the following individuals, who constituted an infor Imagery 28
mal committee, for their assistance in collecting photographs and for their Blank Boxes 34
many helpful suggestions: Anna Querci, Milan; Brian Brace Taylor, Susan Day, Planes and Volumes 42
Paris; Colin Amery, Lance Wright, London; and Shozo Baba, Yoshio Yoshida, Expressionism 46
Tokyo. Sculpture: Organic Form 54
Special thanks must also be given to Mary Jane Lightbown for coordinating
research and for assistance vital to the project; to Marie-Anne Evans for coping Structure
valiantly with manuscripts and correspondence; and to Jane Fluegel for inval Cages 60
uable editorial assistance. Cantilevers 68
A.D. Design by System 70
Glass Skins 72
Greenhouses and
Other Public Spaces 90

Hybrids 100

Louis Kahn 102

James Stirling 106

Robert Venturi 110

Elements
Windows 112
Colonnade and Roof 118
Wall into Roof 120
Parapets 124
Earth 128
Detachable Parts 132

Vernacular
Roofs 134
Roofs and Walls 142
Instant Village 146
Details and Decor 152

F ragments: The Usable Past 156

Historicizing 158

List of Architects 166

Photo Sources 167

Trustees of The Museum of Modern Art 168

Copyright © 1979 by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. All rights reserved. Library
of Congress Catalog Card Number 79-62956. ISBN 0-87070-608-X.Designed by Patrick Cun
ningham, assisted by Keith Davis. Production by Timothy McDonough. Type set by M. J.
Baumwell Typography, New York, N.Y. Printed by Eastern Press, Inc., New Haven, Conn.
Bound by Sendor Bindery, New York, N.Y.
Second printing 1980

The Museum of Modern Art, 11West 53 Street, New York, N.Y. 10019.Printed in the United
States of America.
Introduction

During the last two decades the history of modern architecture has
been one of sorting out, developing, and transforming possibilities
implicit at the beginning. What has changed more than architectural
practice is the way we see buildings and talk about them. Underlying
the change is the feeling, widespread but by no means universal, that
the modern movement in architecture as understood by its pioneers
is now over. That change in attitude describes a hope (or a fear) rather
than a fact, and it also focuses attention on the nature of modernism.
It is unlikely that anyone can offer a definition of modern architec
ture to which there are no exceptions. But at the beginning of the
modern movement one commitment emerged preeminent. Modern
architecture, like engineering, sought to deal only with the truths of
structure and function. It wanted all architectural pleasures to derive
from the straightforward encounter with necessity. Architectural
fictions, the play of unnecessary forms with which the historic styles
sought to transcend necessity, were rejected as unworthy. That at
least describes an essential characteristic of what came to be called
the International Style, to which the most important exception was
Expressionism in its various national modes— the loser, for a time,
in the wars of persuasion.
But an architecture based on objective analysis alone is impossible
—emotionally, logically, and even technically. Modern architecture
has thus had a history of trying to escape from the internal contra
dictions of its own philosophy. Its forms have had to be justified accord
ing to determinist doctrines which the forms themselves contradict.
For the most part those forms have remained within the reductionist
parameters of engineering and technology, modified from year to
year by developments in modern painting and sculpture, by the accel
erated international publication of projects and built work, and by
a quantity of building activity around the world without precedent
in human history.
These factors have helped to bring about an altered perception
of the social significance of architecture itself. Theories about hous
ing and urban planning, for example, already suspect by 1960, and
once held to be the very heart of modernism's special claim to ethical
competence, by the end of the seventies have been largely repudi
ated for contributing to the environmental dysfunctions they were
supposed to end. The arbitrary nature of certain forms and configura
tions, almost always derived from abstract sculpture, becomes more
apparent as belief in their magical efficacy falters. Nor is the loss
of confidence limited to dealing with large questions affecting the
social order. It extends to each morning's decisions.
For the pioneers of the modern movement the "how" of building
answered the "what" But by the end of the fifties what to build and
how to build had again become two separate questions. Contradic
tory approaches were justified in the cause of variety —or in the
higher cause of finding for each problem a uniquely appropriate
solution. Soon the variety became, as Peter Collins has described it,
"archaeologically unclassifiable',' while the public (and a great many
 architects) continued to feel that modern architecture was peculiarly
monotonous. Thus in 1960, some months before his seventy-fifth
birthday, when Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was asked to describe his
working day he answered: "I get up. I sit on the bed. I think what the
hell went wrong? We showed them what to do'".

Opinions about what architecture ought to be have changed, during

the last 20 years, against the background of traumatic public events.
Many of these events, worldwide in their impact, have had their
locus in the United States. Americans have experienced three poli
tical assassinations, an unpopular war, which was lost; economic in
stability , a reduction in the supply of energy before it had been Mario Pani Architect & Associates. Ciudad Tlate-
lolco Housing Project, Mexico City, Mexico. 1960-74
expected; and a growing fear that technology has become unman
ageable. In the midst of these harrowing experiences are some
technological triumphs: sending the first men to the moon must be
a decisive event, even if other events have made it seem almost a
minor footnote to what really concerns us.
As many observers have noted, there are now more architects
practicing their profession than ever before, and the number of stu
dents in training exceeds both the number of architects and the
capacity of even the most productive and well-regulated society to
employ them. Inevitably, many of these students will never practice
architecture. But their training is bound to affect their judgment
when they become clients, and it has already affected their role as
an audience. An appetite for the imagery of architecture improves
self-confidence in telling architects how to do their work, or in doing
it for them.
The study of architecture seems to be replacing the study of law
as a respectable and benevolent pursuit. But unlike law it cannot be
contained within rigorously defined standards of professionalism: in
the United States the tendency to eliminate professional certifica
tion of architects is strong enough to provoke opposition from the
American Institute of Architects.
Critical discourse has shifted away from the profession. The most
instructive commentary no longer comes from practicing architects
who incidentally teach, and whose comments are interesting be
cause their work commands admiration, but rather from academics
who may or may not be architects, or architects who build, and for
whom critical discourse is regulated by its own laws of production
and distribution. Within this network, the connoisseur's cultivation
of sensibility yields to what might be called technical gossip; aesthet
ics is seen as philosophy, and philosophy is seen as an examination
of the structure of meaning, but not necessarily of what is meant.
Whatever it is that architecture is supposed to mean, the words
used for praise or condemnation have largely changed their roles.
"Functional" perhaps meant nothing in particular to begin with, but
was often useful in persuading clients that modernism's bare utili
tarian style could be efficient and cheap. Today "functional" has no
place in serious discourse about the nature of architecture, either as
praise or blame, but "^-functional" may still be used in the old philis-
tine way to disparage the pursuit of aesthetics.
4
 "Clean','"simple','"pure',' "elegant',' all once used to suggest the vir
tues of austerity, have been devalued into something rather different.
Their unsuccessful modes, once laughable, are now admired. "Simple"
is now "slick'.'To be fussy, busy, and vulgar is proof of a knowing dis
dain for simplicity—which is now seen to be inimical to the natural
fullness of life. "Complexity" is put forward as a goal more in keeping
with reality—and, it may be said, the tendency toward complexity
is not without poetic justice.
"Strong','"tough','and "brutal" are post-World War II terms of praise
(although used earlier by the Futurists to evoke the joy of industrial
dynamism and warfare), and often serve as euphemisms for "monu
1 Tlate- Sune Lindstrom, Olle Elg-quist, HSB Construction mental',' a word which may not yet be used without nervous appre
1960-74 Department. Grintorp Apartment Buildings, Taby,
Sweden. 1957-66 hension. But "strong',' "tough',' and "brutal" describe qualities pres
ently less gratifying than those now designated by "crazy','"wild','and
"camp'.'The parody tends to become the norm.
"Abstract" remains a more or less constant value for that part of
modern architecture still under the spell of abstract painting and
sculpture. "Contextual',' implying a due regard for what is happening
around you, is a term of praise difficult to reconcile with a taste for the
abstract, although the effort is often made.
"Taste" itself is conceivable only contextually —that is, it enters
sophisticated discourse for purposes of comparison. What was called
"bad taste" in the forties is now seen to be ripe with "meaning'.'Those
who actually have bad taste think they have its opposite, but "good
Emile Aillaud. Housing, Pantin-les-Courtillieres, taste" is a quality or condition no serious architect would now claim
France. 1954-59
for his own work, lest it be misunderstood as representing "middle-
class values',' which middle-class intellectuals disdain.
The odor of "good taste" can often be dispelled by the introduction
of "meaning','as long as meaning is retrieved from formerly unaccept
able sources (the archaic, the moderne and streamlined, and the
more domestic forms of the inept). But as the demand for meaning
increases, new—or old—sources of supply must be found. This has
helped to change the import of "historicizing',' formerly inadmis
sible but now a new frontier of meaning. Like historicizing, "eclec
ticism" is the beneficiary of a separate and in this case prior
rehabilitation. It is the aesthetic counterpart of "pluralism',' which
is now understood as a socially desirable and positive form of toler
ance. But tolerance is a dangerous word because it implies a dom
inant position from which lesser manifestations may be patronized.
Thus the new pluralism will encounter its defeat, when the time
comes for reintegration, under the tutelage of a single intolerant
purpose. Meanwhile the accumulating examples of coherent alter
nate views may yet rehabilitate the word "style'.'
A peculiarity of "meaning" would seem to be that it cannot be
found in the immediate present. It can be found in the past, even
the recent past of modernism's minor modes, or in the future, as in
the varieties of science-fiction decor characterized by Colin Rowe
as "Futurist Revival',' but the present as such is increasingly "mean
ingless'.' There are, however, at least two important exceptions: Las
Vegas has been cited as a part of the present that is rich with mean
ing: we can learn from it how to design for compulsive behavior.
5
Disneyland is considered less rewarding, even though so much of it
deals quite cleverly with the past, but that may be because the
inane is less interesting than the vicious.
Rapid shifts in value, and perhaps cynicism, make it difficult for
some observers to take competing views of architecture altogether
seriously. Reversals of judgment are seldom complete and never
without ulterior motives. What was bad, for quite specific reasons, is
declared good for the same reasons. Treason, Talleyrand remarked, is
a matter of dates.

More than any other historic style modern architecture has been
dependent on manifestos, theoretical projects, and publicity. With
out reference to its programs of education, and the avowed or im
plicit aim of social revolution with which it began and with which
many of its theorists are still concerned, its architectural intentions
are not always fully explained. Architects know that certain build
ings, whatever their merits as usable architecture, are really to be
appreciated as allusions to certain projects, unbuilt or unbuildable,
which constitute a second order of architectural history. We have WED Enterprises, Inc. Disney World, Lake Buena
Vista, Fla. 1965-71
had a built architecture which tends to justify itself by citing what
it has not been able to build.
Abundant opportunities to build in the sixties, despite faltering
convictions, perhaps helped to deflect purely theoretical studies
toward social criticism cast as architectural jokes. We live over
whelmed by machines: therefore why not walking machine-cities on
mechanical legs, of science-fiction comic-strip provenance, as in the
entertaining drawings of the English group Archigram? And
existential nausea ought to have its architectural mode, so why not
the surreal perspectives of "utility grids" covering the earth, as in
the Antonioniesque productions of the Italian group Superstudio?
Deliberately ambiguous, these and similar studies —especially those
accompanied by left-wing political expectations —owe much of their
charm to uncertainty. Since they cannot be serious they must be
jokes, unless they are meant to be warnings.
Alienation is often held to be the condition natural to our time,
but it has never been clear why architects should make the condition
more pervasive, except as a tactic of subversion for political ends.
For that purpose such projects might best be evaluated for their
chances, if built, of provoking revolution. Insofar as the spirit of sub
version pervades some built works, the result would seem to be that
they postpone revolution by increasing the tolerance for alienation.
Of course during the last 20 years there have been important
projects, and commissioned buildings that have remained only proj
ects, that do not have social criticism as their primary justification.
Some are of interest because they push a technology slightly beyond
its normal application; others are of interest because they explore
ideas that are only just beginning to find clients. For the sixties it
is the projects of the twenties that best explain architectural inten
tions. In the seventies perhaps the most significant projects deal
with the incorporation of historical forms, and the rapid acceptance
of such ideas by corporate as well as private clients renders them
6
less instructive as projects than as built work. In any case, the public
is left with what has been built—actual buildings—for which theory
or the promise of revolution is not always adequate consolation.
Judgment is hampered not only by the overwhelming volume of
theory, but by the sheer quantity of published work —and what is
published represents only a fraction of what is built each year. Infor
mation about buildings depends on surrogate materials —photo
graphs, models, drawings —and the manner in which images are
selected and organized is central to the selection of buildings for
this book, as it was for the exhibition that preceded it.
Mass journalism for the general public oscillates between the
unique and the average, but its choices are most often governed
by the potential for "controversy." The merely good, which may not
be in dispute, is least eligible for public scrutiny; it is difficult to
imagine a newspaper article that says: here are some good build
ings—none of them has won a prize and they are in no way peculiar.
Professional journals whose primary purpose is to document what
seems to be the best work must make their selections within the
limits imposed by a fixed number of pages. Extensive presentation
of one building necessarily crowds out many others; the equal docu
mentation of many buildings tends to subordinate them as members
of a class. Most often it is a class defined by use or by a set of tech
nical problems: here are 10 houses, or 10 hotels, or 20 prefabricated
schools. Within each class, the greater the variations the more inter
esting and useful such surveys are felt to be.
But it is most unlikely that a selection of buildings would be made
on the basis of comparable aesthetics: here are 10 minimal sculp
tures designed for a variety of uses. Classification by aesthetic
intent emphasizes choices freely made by the architect. Since even
the happiest of these free choices will seldom be acknowledged as
such by the architects who made them, and since they are some
times difficult to explain, it is easier to talk about something else.
Most criticism does talk about something else, broadening the ex
ternal references but narrowing the choice of examples. Increasing
the examples but narrowing the discussion to aesthetic intent, as
much as possible, has the advantage of dealing more directly with
what architects choose to do because they think it is beautiful.
Museum exhibitions of architecture have conflicting purposes.
In the thirties they presented a new architecture that the public
could see nowhere else and that architects could not see as much of
even in the professional journals. Such exhibitions drew on some 20
years of work, much of it the primary statement of the new archi
tectural aesthetic, much of it interesting diversificationof its possibilities.
By the early fifties this aesthetic had begun to gain government
and business patronage, particularly in the United States. Exhibi
tions could call attention to these expanding opportunities, illus
trating in detail work that was believed to be excellent while
assuring patrons and public alike that its proliferation was desir
able. Validation of the best of the new (with occasional reappraisals
of the old as pro to-new) was believed to serve the interests of both
lay and professional audiences.
 In the seventies the interests of those audiences have diverged.
Validation is beside the point: no one needs to be persuaded that
the new is good when the appetite for something new exceeds the
capacity to produce it. Nor is architectural reportage appropriate
or even practical, given the nature of a museum. Architects, in any
case, keep up with the new through professional journals rather
than relatively infrequent exhibitions, and the same is true for a
public well served by architectural reporting in newspapers and
popular magazines.
Therefore it is not surprising that a professional audience might
more than ever expect an exhibition to declare that this work is
excellent and worthy of comparison with the great work of the past,
at the same time implying that all other comparable work may be
ignored. It is an expectation best met by reducing, rather than increas
ing, the work under review. The profession responds to exclusivity.
The public, on -the other hand, although it may share the profes
sional's interest in annual nominations to a Hall of Fame, has a certain
interest in the generality of architectural practice—as indeed the
majority of architects, whose talents and opportunities may preclude
stardom, must also have. The habit ofreduction to the "best" examples
distorts the issues and forestalls certain kinds of judgments.
Underlying distinctions between the uniquely excellent, the ordi
narily good, and the acceptable average is a difference between archi
tecture and the other arts. Modern architecture claims to be able
to make the world both physically and psychologically better to live
in. Its avowed aim is to transform the real world. It has attempted to
do this by translating the uniquely excellent into general practice.
When general practice suffers from the translation, it is no serv
ice to the cause of excellence to insist that general practice has failed.
It is more logical to reexamine the ideas that have been held superior
in the light of what happens to them when they are broadly applied —
unless one is willing to abandon the idea that the art of architecture
must have broad application. That might be a fair choice, but it is not
the choice that modern architecture made in its formative years, nor
has the commitment to universal applicability ever been renounced.
Indeed, the modern movement has been distinguished by the well-
intentioned but reckless belief that its principles can and must deal
with every conceivable problem.
With all of the foregoing in mind, it is reasonable to suppose that
there will have been produced during the last 20 years not 10or 50 but
400 or even 4,000 buildings that illuminate the exchange of architec
tural ideas through their primary statement, their adaptation to
normative use, their hold on our sensibilities, and their rapid devalu
ation. It is also reasonable to expect that among 400 buildings will
be most of the major achievements of the period.
In an exhibition variations on a theme can be presented almost
simultaneously, the number of direct comparisons being limited
chieflyby the 10or 12images the eye can take in at once—but expanded
by the perspectives possible in a gallery. In a book the number of direct
comparisons is limited to the images that can be accommodated on
facing pages. Such comparisons may then acquire exaggerated sig-
8
nificance. Verbal explanation must intrude, to some degree lessen
ing the force of visual evidence. Thus the groupings feasible in the
exhibition, although here substantially retained, have been reduced
in quantity and occasionally modified. The result nevertheless in
cludes 362 of the exhibition's 406 images.
The criteria of selection have not necessarily applied to a building
in its totality. Photographs have been chosen because they seem to
capture the essential idea, whether in whole or in part, and most of
the selections conform to those approved by the architects. Plans
and sections have been omitted because they do not contribute directly
to the impressions an observer receives when passing by an actual
building (although it must be admitted that some modern buildings
require the posting of plans for anyone intending to go inside).
The conjoining of different kinds and degrees of quality is prob
lematic. Despite arguments to the contrary, some architects will
feel that true excellence is denigrated when made to share a spotlight
with work that may resemble it only superficially. That may remain
a question of individual judgment; more important is that narrowing
the comparisons to similarities in aesthetic choice focuses attention
on the borrowing of formal ideas customary to architecture. This
raises questions of priority, which is to say of originality.
We would not judge the quality of a painting by Picasso according
to the quality of its imitations. No one studying painting is taught to
paint Picassos, nor are imitation Picassos highly regarded. But archi
tectural ideas are models. Part of their value is that they can be
imitated, varied, "improved'.' No matter how strongly the modern
movement stressed the idea of approaching each problem without
prior commitments—as if the wheel had to be perpetually reinvented
—any successful solution to an architectural problem embodies a
previous success, and is itself successful in that it can be imitated.
Yet skill in imitation is seldom advertised as a matter of merit. On
the contrary, the more dependent a work may be on received ideas,
the more passionately emphasized are its slightest innovations or
refinements. Now that imitation is not as focused on the work of three
or four great, pioneering figures, the movement of ideas is less from
father to son and more from brother to brother. Competition and the
ambivalence architects feel about originality make it awkward to
discuss an individual's use of a shared idea—but not necessarily
the limitations of the idea itself.

The effects buildings produce are primarily and unavoidably visual.

Evaluation might therefore benefit by setting aside the program
notes, the manifestos, the moral injunctions with which architecture
is so often launched on a helpless world. Buildings are designed by
individuals, or groups of individuals, who must function as artists
and who have personal predispositions towards certain kinds of form.
An architect whose greatest pleasure is to shape intricate sculp
tures will strive to do so no matter how inopportune a particular
occasionmay be. An architect whose happiness it is to solve problems
—connecting one piece of structure to another, for example—will
tend to avoid the outright production of sculpture. For some archi-
9
 tects neither solving problems nor making sculptures will suffice:
their abiding interest is a mise-en-scene that embraces much more
than their own work. In a way their diffidence is ultimately more
demanding, in that it stakes out a larger claim.
The thing in itself, independent of technique; technique in itself,
independent of the thing it makes; the thing and the technique in the
service of what already exists —few architects are wholly given to
just one kind of response. Different intentions may combine to pro
duce in one work a result admired for integrating disparate possi
bilities—and the same work may be rejected because it is not "pure'.'
During the last 20 years attitudes toward pure versions of anything
have changed, but the architecture of the period may still be usefully
examined within these broad groupings:

Post-World War II interpretations of Cubism and Expressionism,

LeCorbusier. Unite d'Habitation, Marseilles, France.
in which architecture is seen primarily as the invention of sculp 1946-52
tural form;

Structural design, in which architecture is seen as the systematic

solution of technical problems;

Regional or vernacular building, in which the forms of modern archi

tecture are subordinated to traditional modes.

Prior to World War II, modern architecture was largely concerned

with planar effects of volume and transparency. Using smooth sur
faces of white stucco and large areas of glass, it created an image
characteristically light, airy, and cheerful. But by the early thirties
this idiom was already felt to be too limited. Its range was broadened
by the introduction of natural materials, like the stone wall in Le
Corbusier's Pavilion Suisse, and by effects of rusticity contrasted
Le Corbusier. Jaoul Houses, Neuilly, France. 1954-56
with the elegance of new, technically refined materials.
By 1946 the balance had changed. Le Corbusier's postwar work,
particularly the Marseilles apartment house, the Jaoul houses, and the
chapel at Ronchamp, led the way toward a new preoccupation with
mass, weight, rough textures, and deliberately crude workman
ship. Where light and transparency had once been associated with
physical and mental health, the new ponderousness was accompanied
by no formal justification but was understood to be of an emotional
resonance in keeping with the "age of anxiety'.'
In Europe and England the style recalled wartime German forti
fications like those on the English Channel, and often echoed the
bizarre contrasts of scale produced by such sinister apparitions as
Friedrich Tamms' antiaircraft towers in Vienna. This style was
applied with equal enthusiasm to museums, theaters, housing,
schools— to virtually everything except factories, which continued to
Le Corbusier. Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut, Ron-
be built in less cumbersome ways. champ, France. 1950-54
Brutalism, as the style has been called, is aggressive form not
necessarily dependent on exposed concrete (Le Corbusier's beton brut).
Its spirit has influenced the use of other materials in less dynamic
ways of building. American versions are relatively calm and tend to
the impersonal smoothness of "minimal" or "primary form" sculpture,
10
 which they resemble and which they may have influenced. Smooth
or rough, the message is essentially the same. "Brutal" describes not
so much a single mode of architectural composition as a taste for the
intimidating, the gratuitously hostile.
Other sculptural modes less indebted to Cubism have persisted,
and however violent their effects they are seldom perceived as
Brutalist. The angular, faceted, and largely opaque masses used by
Gottfried Bohm in his extraordinary churches are exemplary of
latter-day Expressionism. Most building programs cannot be made
to sustain such fiercely introspective moods, and not surprisingly
German fortifications, Longy Common, Alderney,
Channel Islands. WW II there are only a few persuasive examples cast as apartment houses
or concert halls. But in another sense all Brutalist architecture is a
mode of Expressionism, in that its forms "express" an emotional
content independent of the "objective" facts of structure and function.
Occasionally the expressive content of a building that is conceived
as a minimalist sculpture, like Victor Lundy's in Washington, D.C.,
bears some plausible relationship to its program. Thus, the blank,
formal symmetry and the threatening mass cantilevered 55 feet
seem appropriate enough when one learns that the building is the
United States Tax Court.
A second alternative to Cubism is the curvilinear style in which
buildings resemble the forms of living organisms rather than hard-
edged geometric masses. Most architects predisposed to this literal
version of organic form have sought maximum continuity of surface
and space. This goal is incompatible with most planning require
Friedrich Tamms. Antiaircraft fortification, Vienna, ments; and as might be expected, its pursuit is usually confined to
Austria. WW II houses. Nevertheless, the use of biologically organic form in archi
tecture is a peculiarly modern development that has had a greater
followingin the postwar years than ever before. It is sustained by its
own apparatus of theory and holistic philosophy. Concerned with
the psychological effects of enclosure, its proponents have argued
for a genuinely radical break with all forms of right-angled, cellular
composition, which they see as inherently oppressive.

Structuralist design in its purest form deals with what Mies van der
Rohe called "skin and bones" architecture: a steel or concrete skeleton
structure covered by a glass or metal skin. Although Mies's own
projects for glass skyscrapers in the twenties emphasized the skin
and showed no structure at all, his American work increasingly con
centrated on the bones until even the skin had its own external arma
ture of metal mullions.
Some architects at the beginning of the sixties sought to abstract
the skeletal cage still further by modifying its proportions and elimi
nating as much detail as possible. Others, perhaps in response to the
work of sculptor-architects in various Brutalist modes, have sought
to give to skeletal structure itself an expressive plastic complexity.
Still others have borrowed the look of machinery or the bulky joints
of a child's Tinker Toy. And a fascination with the possibilities of
structure for its own sake sometimes leads to gymnastic exercises,
hurling great blocks of buildings into the air for no reason more per
Victor Lundy. United States Tax Court (two views),
Washington, D.C. 1967-74 suasive than that it can be done.
11
 What these approaches have in common is their reliance on some
aspect of structure to communicate interesting visual information
about a building, other than the nature of its use. Paradoxically, the
latest (perhaps the final) stage of this architecture returns to the
earlier preeminence of the skin, for which metal and glass cladding
systems have been so refined as to communicate almost nothing. Of
all transfor mations of formal and technical ideas this one is perhaps
the most striking, having now come full circle to take up again one
of the enduring fantasies of the twenties.
Because the aesthetic impulse behind these technical developments
minimizes visible detail, their origin in problems of structural design
tends to be obscured. Having arrived at the perfect, infinitely extend
able skin, there is little the problem-solving architect can do with it
besides wrap it around an odd shape. Some architects have preferred
eccentric parallelograms; others have preferred shapes derived from
traditional masonry architecture. In either case the shapes, as they
become noticeable in themselves, begin to confuse the issue. Perhaps
the best of these skin-buildingsare the least self-consciouslydesigned:
the plain supermarket packages in predictable shapes and sizes.
It is arguable that structuralists intent on solving problems succeed
moi e often than sculptors intent on making expressive works of art.
Sculpture requires a modicum of talent, which is imponderable; prob
lem-solving requires aptitude. Successful sculpture is difficult to
copy; successful problem-solving is cumulative and usually improves
in the process. Nevertheless if the sculptor risks the outright hos
tility of the public, the problem-solver risks indifference. Indifference
may soonbecome hostility, and when it does it is because of a pervasive
sense that the wrong problems are being solved.

Modern architecture tends to develop by a process of exaggeration.

If the structural elements of a particularly striking work are too thin
or too fat, the first wave of imitations will make them thinner or fatter;
the second wave will try to do the same with all remaining elements.
This process, perhaps unconscious, exerts a centrifugal force on
coherent systems of design and ultimately reduces them to parodies.
Attention then turns to the design of individual elements that can be
elaborated without dependence on any single mode of architectural
coherence. Windows, roofs, parapets -any element that can be
isolated from a larger system can also be made to generate its own
system.
Marginally related to these sometimes quite productive excursions
is the use of painting at mural scale. In most cases abstract painting
applied to architecture contributes little that would be missed if it
were removed and installed in a gallery. In any case, it asks to be
judged as painting. Only rarely has painting been made to contribute
to architectural form in ways that significantly alter architectural
intentions; even rarer is painting used to produce effects that would
otherwise be impossible (see inside back cover).
When different kinds of form are combined in one building most
observers make the assumption that the building is still meant to be
perceived as a unified whole. If the forms are too unlike each other the
12
 observer must work to keep track of their origins, mentally separating
what the architect has combined or joining together what has been
separated. In either case the perception of unity is usually thought to
depend on the forms being to some degree compatible.
An important development during the last 20 years is the juxta
position in one building of incompatible forms that cannot have evolved
from one another, and are juxtaposed in order to insist on their un-
relatedness. The result may fairly be called a hybrid, and the most
disquieting examples appear to have been designed by opposing
teams, recruited from sculptors and technicians, in a contest neither
side wins (see page 100).
Hybrids of a sort can also be produced by contrasts within the same
formal category. Alvar Aalto's Baker Dormitory for the Massachusetts
Institute of Technologyis an early (1947-48)and celebrated example.
Its elevation facing the Charles River is a sinuous curve, ostensibly
to give each room a view up or down the river. The curve stresses con
tinuity and implies that the rear elevation must be simply the back
- 1
of the same curve. But at the back the building is unexpectedly
i -hrrii staccato, its angled planes tied together by a continuous stair climb
ing up the walls. The result is an unexpectedly "hybrid" configura
tion that challenges, but does not repudiate, the idea of unity.
Aalto's prewar architecture was only lightly tied to the orthodox
International Style. It was admired rather more for its embodiment
Alvar Aalto. Baker Dormitory (two views), of regional (Scandinavian) qualities. In the Baker Dormitory, as in
Cambridge, Mass. 1947-48. some buildings of the fifties, Aalto managed to synthesize a kind of
one-man vernacular. Its flexibility is deceptive and less easily imi
tated than might be supposed, but some of Aalto's ideas have helped
to sustain the legitimacy of a regional architecture disaffiliated from
the International Style on principle.

"Regionalism" refers to an architecture of local characteristics —

like Cape Cod cottages or Mexican patio houses—prompted by cli
mate and available materials. Where it makes few or no references
to classical styles it is usually called vernacular building, implying
that it can be handled by craftsmen without an education in
art history.
Regional or vernacular building is most often characterized by
the use of a visible roof as a primary element of architectural com
position; by a preference for natural materials used more or less as
craftsmen have always used them; and by effects of small, almost
domestic scale—even for fairly large public buildings.
Kinship with modernist abstraction was usually indicated, in the
forties and fifties, by shed roofs rather than gables (sometimes as
a compromise with zoning codes which forbade flat roofs); by the
absence of decorative detail; and by a modest use of glass walls.
The spontaneous ease of this kind of building influenced such Euro
pean modernists transplanted to the United States as Marcel Breuer
and Richard Neutra, both of whom gradually abandoned the white,
planar abstraction of their first American houses for natural wood
and pitched roofs. In principle such architecture was to have led to
a normative style of wide applicability. In practice its opportunities
13
 were limited, until the fifties, to houses and other small-scale build
ings outside the cities or in contexts essentially antiurban.
During the forties Regionalism was advocated, particularly in
England and Scandinavia, as a more practical alternative to the
theoretical rigors of the International Style, but at the same time it
was dismissed as inadequate and sentimental. Since there is no
such thing as regional glass or steel, the argument went, how could
one justify regional architecture? And how could the regionalists
ever cope with urban planning? But Regionalism did not fade away:
it prospered. In town and country it has gradually extended its
range to all kinds of buildings, even the skyscraper.
Associated with radical "alternate life style" movements as much
as with political and cultural conservatism, Regionalism and its
vernacular variations address problems of survival and coexistence
—ofhistorical continuity. By definition, Regionalism keeps the door
open to historicizing, and historicizing cannot long be channeled
within the limits of a single time or place. Its natural amplification
is eclecticism.
One might expect that regional and vernacular building would by
now be the subject of serious critical evaluation. Instead, it has been
largely ignored even in those countries where its vitality is most
obvious. Surveys of modern architecture in Japan, for example,
pay scant attention to the continuing development of a tradition
which used to be cited as one of the sources of Western modernism,
and to which even today's modernist ideologues occasionally return
for nourishment. In England, where the modern movement has in
curred the most outspoken hostility, the available alternatives have
: not yet been the subject of sustained critical examination. This in
ability to come to grips with a substantial part of modern practice
is all the more remarkable in that those historians who might have
been expected to do so, by virtue of their sympathy for indigenous
building, apparently respond to such work only when the cultures Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. U.S. Air Force Acad
emy, Colorado Springs, Colo. 1954-58. Chapel,
that produce it are poverty-stricken, archaic, or dead. 1960-62
By the end of the seventies a self-conscious sort of picking at the
past has begun to appear as a fresh possibility—intellectually re
spectable and perhaps even avant-garde. Yet historicizing work of
the late fifties is still dismissed as frivolous, despite—or perhaps
because of—its serious intent. Certain buildings of this kind may
continue to seem inherently trivial. But many architects tried to deal
with the problem of historical associations before criticism recog
nized its existence and the developments it implied. It was the
reappearance of this problem during the fifties that clearly reflected
the impoverishment of abstract, reductionist form.
Thus the United States Air Force Academy (1954-58),designed
by Walter Netsch of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, began as a
demonstration of Miesian structural design and technical sophisti
cation. Those characteristics were considered more appropriate to
the client than allusions to a spurious history—although some mem
bers of Congress urged a Gothic-style Air Academy.
When the architect began to design a chapel within this group
of buildings, the Miesian structural idiom in its most logical, reduc-
14
 tionist form seemed inadequate—indeed Mies had already proved
the point with a chapel indistinguishable from his other buildings
on the campus of Illinois Institute of Technology. For the Air Force
the solution was a structural exercise irrationally complicated, so
that a display of engineering in a pitched roof would differentiate
the chapel from the other buildings and add value ("meaning") pre
cisely because it looked—Gothic. This design aroused controversy
because the "meaning" was unclear: one Congressman opposed it
because he thought it looked like a wigwam.
By the end of the sixties interest in the past had been quickened
Alison and Peter Smithson; Maurice H. J. Bebb. by the desire to preserve nineteenth-century buildings, and has now
The Economist Buildings, London, England. 1960-64.
(Left: Boodles Club by J. Crunden, 1775; bay window become an economic issue as well as an aesthetic one. Even though
added in 1821-24 by J.B. Papworth.) the older buildings are not invariably distinguished, fear of what
might replace them is often great enough to enlist support for their
adaptation to new uses. Designing for this purpose has prompted
the renewal of skills long neglected, but the uncertainty with which
old buildings are remodeled is still masked by violent contrasts be
tween the old and the new, paralleling the taste for "hybrids'.' Even
simple and well-intentioned juxtapositions, like the Economist Build
ings adjacent to the Boodles Club, betray modernism's unfamiliarity
with the social graces.
We do not know what to make of the past. And even for those who
balk at being deprived of memory, the act of remembering is an
embarrassment that must be distanced by irony. Tobe taken seriously
Francis Pym. Ulster Museum Extension, Belfast,
the architect must appear to be joking. The problem is to know
Northern Ireland. 1965-72. (Original building by when to laugh.
James C. Wynnes, 1924.) As historicizing gains momentum it strengthens the conviction
that the modern movement has entered a qualitatively different
phase—different from other recent manifestations that have been
called "postmodern" Talbot Hamlin, writing in 1947about "The Post
modern House',' looked forward to a happier day when modernism
would be over: the postmodern he anticipated was a return to the
premodern. Irving Howe, writing in the sixties about American
literary culture, related the postmodern to the confusions of mass
society, in which the iconoclastic threat once posed by the modern
is transformed into a pleasing entertainment. What is distinctively
postmodern is trivialization, suggesting "the possibility that we
are now living through the unsettling moral and intellectual con
sequences of the breakup of modernist culture, or the decline of
Gwathmey Siegel Architects. Whig Hall, Princeton
the new!'
University, Princeton, N.J. 1970-72. (Original build The idea of a postmodern architecture raises the question of what
ing by A. Page Brown, 1893.) is, or was, properly modern. If orthodox modernism entailed ab
straction, reduction, and fidelity to structure in the service of social
revolution, then its dominance as an idea ended before World War II.
Defined with sufficient rigor, it is compressed to something that
flashed across the horizon between the early twenties and the early
thirties: 10 or 12years and a handful of masterpieces.
Despite evidence to the contrary, most of its later style phases
were not at first thought to have undermined its essential logic or
its intentions, but rather to have broadened its range and its appeal.
Modern architecture developed in the conviction that it had made
15
 a radical and irreparable break with the past. The accelerating
emergence of historicism must now alter that view. It already has,
in that the historicizing impulse naturally seeks out those phases
of architectural history with which the modern senses an affinity.
"History" at the moment means Neoclassicism.
Some reasons for this have been well stated by James Stirling, in
his 1979 program for one of the architectural competitions conducted
by the Japanese magazine Shinkenchiku. Stirling chose as a problem
the design of a house for a famous architect —Karl Friedrich Schinkel
(1781-1841).Schinkel, he explains, "was active at the time in history
when austere Neoclassicism (Biedermeier) could easily have de
veloped into modern architecture and design without a break in
continuity or the intervention of the Beaux-Arts and Victorian
styles. Today, as the sustaining force of the so-called abstract modern
style in art, architecture, and furniture runs out of steam, we look
further back than the immediate past to an architecture richer in
memory and association and related to a thicker layer of history
(perhaps to something similar to Soane's and Schinkel's view of
Greek and Roman architecture but to Egyptian and Gothic archi
tecture as well)'.'
Stirling goes on to tell the contestant that he can "assume that
the competition requires a modern or Neoclassical house, or a
modern Neoclassical, or classic neomodern, or any mixture of them
he likes (the terms modern and Neoclassical are here used in their
wider sense and are applicable to either the period of today or the
period of Schinkel, or to both)'.'
By the time he digests the implications of this ingenious program
the contestant may be ready to conclude that "modernism" was an
imaginary interlude; but if it really did happen it was little more
than an acute seizure of Neoclassical probity— as if architecture
had been afflicted with a kind of anorexia nervosa and has just been
persuaded to resume eating.
Modern architecture's affinity with Neoclassicism is real enough,
but at this stage Neoclassicism, if it is not being parodied, is turned
into only another mode of reductionism. What differentiates modern
architecture from Neoclassicism, as from other historic styles, is
its abandonment of about one-third of the resources previously
available for the production of architectural form. Abstract surface
and mass, and articulated structure, are retained; applied decora
tion, among other forms of the desirably superfluous or fictitious,
is denied.
Neoclassicism retained every device: the measured deployment
of all its resources enabled it to deal appropriately with every kind
of situation. It could invest with dignity or liveliness even those
buildings of no great intrinsic interest— low-cost housing, for ex
ample—without being obliged, as modernism has been, to distort
the program by introducing gratuitous "expressive" complications
or, alternatively, settling for an architecture of impoverishment.
A good case can be made for Neoclassicism as a better form
of modernism.
But we are not Neoclassicists, at least not yet. Modern architecture
16
is likely to prevail because quite often it produces beautiful buildings.
It is the known style, as securely entrenched as any academic mode of
the nineteenth century. Abstraction still corresponds to some deeply
felt need of our culture, even though it can never subdue the need for
enrichment and specificity. If there is to be a major shift in sensi
bility it will have to overcome psychologicalbarriers. Enrichment of
form as it applies to buildings, interior decor, and furniture design
need present no great problem, but typewriters, cars, and airplanes
are not so tractable. Neither are those architectural situations which
must accommodate technology's more intimidating artifacts. A Neo-
classicical airport is imaginable, perhaps, but not without a consider
able rearrangement of our prejudices.
Whatever its excesses or deficiencies,modernism has valued build
ings and artifacts that are made well and do what is required of them.
In that sense it has been against interpretation, preferring instead
the self-evident fitness of things. As interpretation is again required,
it will collide with fitness. We are still dealing with the conflict
between art and technology that beset the nineteenth century, and
which the modern movement expected to resolve.

17
SculpturalForm: Brutalism ings. The two modes were often mixed, as
they still are, and the manner of mixing them
Two architectural aesthetics vied for ap constitutes a large part of architectural his
proval at the beginning of the sixties. One, tory during the last 20 years. However, it is
derived from the work of Ludwig Mies van the undiluted sculptural mode that best em
der Rohe, was concerned almost exclusively bodies what came to be called Brutalism, not
with steel and glass; it came to be widely used withstanding the initial association of that
for high-rise buildings and other commercial term with the deliberately crude use of steel.
work. The other derived from Le Corbusier's The buildings illustrated on pages 18
massively sculptural buildings in rough con through 25 are among the most accomplished
crete (beton brut). This post- World War II of their kind. Their aesthetic began as engi
mode was often used for institutional and neering, modified by Cubism and other mod
governmental work, perhaps because such ern movements in painting and sculpture.
buildings easily dominate their surround What distinguishes them from comparable
work of the twenties, besides a greater rest
lessness of composition, is chiefly coarse ma
terials and finishes; the change in scale (they
are often very big); and the change in pur
pose: they are schools, museums, theaters,
shopping centers, and housing—not one is a
factory, a grain silo, or a hydroelectric plant.
Their architects have transformed a utilitar
ian aesthetic with sculptural inventions,
mostly designed for aggressive effects of
mass and weight.
There is a limit to the number of ways
interesting sculptural events can be gener
ated. Structure alone seldom requires bulk,
but columns can be disguised or enlarged to
make powerful vertical masses (1). Utility
shafts are even better for this purpose, and
can be topped by boxes or hoodlike projec
tions (3). Interior stairs can make strong ver
tical elements, but exterior stairs, where
they can be justified, are an even richer
source of sculptural effects because they can
introduce curves and graded shadows (3, 4,
7). If cantilevered they add a weightiness
that hints of danger. Vertical and horizontal
masses are often grouped side by side with
out seeming to touch. If they do touch they

1. Paul Rudolph. Art and Architecture Building, Yale

University, New Haven, Conn. 1958-64
2. Lyons Israel Ellis Partnership. College of Engi
neering and Science, Polytechnic of Central London,
London, England. 1963-70
3. Owen Luder. Tricorn Wholesale Market and Shop
ping Centre, Portsmouth, England. 1962-65

19
 can be made to collide or bite pieces out of
each other. Some versions of this mode owe
more to Frank Lloyd Wright, de Stijl, and
Constructivism than to Le Corbusier. Charac
teristically they have vertical and horizontal
elements graded in size, thickness, color, and
texture, often made to bypass each other
without actually intersecting (1). This effect
can make even a simple composition look
quite busy. Another Wrightian variation en
tails the plaiting of horizontals and verticals.
The horizontals dominate as cantilevered ter
races with solid parapets (7,8). These compo
sitions tend towards lightness or calm, but
this can be overcome by introducing sharp,
pointed corners, inclining the parapets, and
adding small but insistent detail (6).
Certain forms are thought to be inherently
interesting, regardless of context. Among
them is the famous "Russian Wedge','an audi
torium in a wedge-shaped block (like those
by Konstantin Melnikov), cantilevered in
startling ways or in improbable places (2,
9). Sometimes one element, a roof for exam
ple, can be enlarged to look like a whole build
ing, or like a wedge-shaped auditorium.
Cantilevers can make portions of a building
hover in mid-air, but whole blocks can be held
aloft, or made to look as if they are piled on

4, 6. Hubert Bennett; The Greater London Council.

Hayward Gallery, South Bank, London, England.
1961-67
5. Patrick Hodgkinson. Brunswick Centre, Blooms-
bury, London, England. 1960-72

20 Sculptural Form: Brutalism

 out of
le owe
jl, and
'harac-
izontal
or, and
other
effect
n look
ion en-
'ticals.
ed ter-
;ompo-
m, but
sharp,
;s, and

rently
^.mong
n audi-
those
red in
les (2,
exam-
!build-

lilding
>eheld
led on

/ouncil.
ngland,

hooms-
top of each other (11). At this extreme the
idea of composition itself is called into ques
tion. The parts of a building-may be scattered
and linked in what is meant as a dynamic,
use-related conjunction, free of all prior com
mitments to ideas of order (12). But like
aleatoric music, which in some ways it resem
bles, the spontaneous or random disposition
of elements tends to get fixed in place—for
convenience in musical performance, from
necessity in architecture. The elements of
what is meant to look unorganized are finally
perceived as having their own order, if only
because every other kind has been excluded.

7, 8. Denys Lasdun & Partners. National Theatre.

South Bank, London, England. 1967-76
9. Marcel Breuer and Hamilton P. Smith. New York •
University Lecture Hall, University Heights Cam-
pus, New York, N.Y. 1957-61
10. Kenzo Tange. Kagawa Prefectural Gymnasium,
Kagawa, Japan. 1962-64
 sssk,

- * A5*>
A
uJ
' I^V,

&tes$&-i
f*
-** - <Cv.$ ": +>W
^O?
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•iSliaMax .& wVk'•~. ^ *r\rr -'\v \
tt
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' "*£
V
 11. Bertrand Goldberg Associates. Health Science
Center, Stony Brook, N.Y. 1968-76/
12. John M. Johansen. Mummers Theater, Okla
homa City, Okla. 1966-70.

24 Sculptural Form: Brutalism

cience
 —
id in

f t*r
f
u. 1

The term "megastructure" describes a gigan

tic building involving many different kinds of
use. The type was first proposed theoreti
cally in the eighteenth century, but for mod
ern architecture the term is associated with
one special requirement: that vertical struc
ture alone be fixed in place, and that every
other component be movable and without
permanent use. Not surprisingly, the true

s
megastructure remains a theoretical possibil
12 ity only. No one needs such total flexibility; it
is very expensive, and communities tend to
resist building at megalomaniacal scale.
Megastructure, by default, now refers either
to a medium-sized building designed to look
as if its components can be rearranged at will,
or simply to a very large building of ex
tended, usually linear form.
Two of the most successful built in the six
ties are Paul Rudolph's Boston Government
Service Center (13-15)and John Andrews's
Scarborough College (16). Both are continu
ous linear compositions comprising at least
six main units. These are differentiated from
each other in response to the complex pro
grams they serve, and some of them are fur
ther differentiated from top to bottom within
themselves. At Scarborough the segments
are linked by an internal street along one
side, so that every part can be reached with
out going outdoors. The Boston Service Cen
ter was to have had an office tower as its focal
point, the low line of buildings coiled around
it to make a contained plaza (14).Scarborough
is designed without a major vertical empha
sis, but it also changes axis five times in
response to its rural site. The Service Center
is self-contained and, except for its tower,
26 Sculptural Form: Brutalism
cannot easily be added to; the College is in
tended to grow by incremental additions at
both ends. Rudolph's manner of introducing
variety has a certain consistency throughout
in the use of thin vertical piers and long hor
izontals, the turns or jogs being marked by
curvilinear masses. Andrews marks the
turns less prominently, but the segments are
vertically accentuated at one end, horizon
tally at the other.
Both buildings skillfully demonstrate a
way of coping with immense projects that,
while tantalizing, is now largely rejected, in
part because the giant scale that once was so
exciting has come to seem overbearing and
unnecessary, regardless of any practical
advantages.

13-15.Paul Rudolph with Shepley, Bulfinch, Richard

son & Abbott; Desmond & Lord; H. A. Dyer and
Pedersen & Tilney. Boston Government Service
Center, Boston, Mass. 1962-71
16.John Andrews; Page & Steele. Scarborough Col
lege, University of Toronto, Scarborough, Canada.
1963-65

27
v < lV yt"
SculpturalForm: Imagery
Twenty years ago there was growing interest
in buildings that looked like some aspect of
the function they served or the site they oc
cupied. The best-known examples are Eero
Saarinen's TWA Terminal and J0rn Utzon's
Sydney Opera House (17,19). To most people
the Terminal looks like a bird about to take
flight; the Opera House looks like billowing §gg§l
sails.
Both buildings were shown in a 1959 Mu 125
«**\
seum of Modern Art exhibition called "Archi 55::r
tecture and Imagery," with the observation
that "to evoke such images was not neces
sarily the architect's intention... but the fact
remains that some forms are inherently
richer in overtones —are more provocative of
association —than the purely geometric
forms of abstract architectural composition.
The images they evoke become part of a
building's ultimate value whether or not the
architect sought or even anticipated them'.'
Although Jprn Utzon was pleased to have
people respond to his deliberate evocation of
sails in Sydney's harbor, Eero Saarinen was
reluctant to acknowledge publicly the bird
like image his building suggested, preferring
to justify its shape rather by its plan and
structure. Both buildings function well
enough within the limits understood and ac
cepted by the clients. But, notwithstanding
their fairly explicit imagery, it is an open
question as to whether enjoyment is en
hanced, diminished, or left unaffected by the
associations they provoke. When the image
is ambiguous and probably unintended, ex
traneous associations may be a handicap.
The larger of the two National Gymnasiums
for the Olympics in Japan (18) looks like a
shell when seen from the air and like a ship's
prow from the ground: neither image is rele
vant to the site or the program. The Ele
phant and Rhinoceros Pavilion in London and
the World of Birds building at the Bronx Zoo
(20, 21) are similar in scale and texture, but
not in the scale of their inhabitants. Different
architects working in different cities, to ac
commodate different species, nevertheless
shared a taste for the elephantine.
Between 1959 and 1979 speculation on
imagery and its alleged importance for
meaning" has increased more than its reali
zation in architecture. Explicit meaning de
rived from nonarchitectural sources seemed 17. Eero Saarinen & Associates. TWA Terminal,
John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York,
suspect to Saarinen because, for him as for N.Y. 1957-62
most observers, such meaning was tied to in
tentions normally thought irrelevant to 18. Kenzo Tange. National Gymnasiums for Olym
pics, Tokyo, Japan. 1961-64
architecture. Not until the late sixties were
buildings shaped like hats or ducks elevated 19. Jprn Utzon: Ove Arup & Partners; Hall, Todd &
to serious consideration, and for a few archi Littlemore. Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia.
1956-73
tects kitsch has become a quality to be
sought rather than avoided. Nevertheless, it
is not kitsch that generates useful overtones
29
 ..

30 Sculptural Form: Imagery

for architecture but rather the history of
architectural styles: historicism as such now
confronts this possibility more directly (see
p. 155).Yet there remain differences in emo
tional overtones that seem inseparable from
certain kinds of form.
Certain sculptural modes have been ad
mired (or rejected) just because they are
thought to be inherently rich, without bene
fit of additional, and explicit, suggestions.
Thus in the thirties and forties much Scan
dinavian architecture, and particularly work
by Alvar Aalto, combined familiar natural
materials with free-flowing curves described
as "organic" in acknowledgment of their com
patibility with patterns of growth and human
comfort. Curves were associated with
"warmth'.' Pursued to the exclusion of every
thing else, such forms may become explicitly
sexual and constitute a subclass of modern
architecture indebted to the sculpture of
Jean Arp in particular and to Surrealism in
general (see p. 54).

20. Casson Conder & Partners. Elephant & Rhinoc

eros Pavilion, London Zoological Gardens, London,
England. 1959-64
21. Morris Ketchum, Jr. & Associates. Lila Acheson
Wallace World of Birds, Bronx Zoo, New York, N.Y.
1968-72
22. Claude Parent & Paulo Virilio. St. Bernadette
of Banlay Church, Nevers, France. 1964-66

i m
 Used rather as an adjunct to rectilinearity,
curved planes often enrich architectural
form without necessarily becoming repre
sentational. Thus the curved corners of the
Estde Lauder Laboratories (24) extend be
yond the adjacent walls and then snap back
into alignment: the effect makes the eye
race along the wall to take the next turn;
and despite its construction of modular
panels, the ribbonlike wall seems to have the
taut resiliency of a stretched fabric. Differ
ent kinds of movement and their concomitant
associations are produced by different kinds
of curves: slow and ponderous in the
Rhode Island Junior College (25), rhythmi
cally shifting and geological in the Diissel-
dorf playhouse (27); contemplative and sensu
ous in the Canadian church (26), voluptuous
in the New York Synagogue (23).

32 Sculptural Form: Imagery

iarity,
Rural
"epre-
of the
id be-
) back
e eye
turn;
dular
ye the
)iffer-
litant
kinds
1 the
thmi-
iissel-
ensu-
tuous

23. William N. Breger. Civic Center Synagogue, New

York, N.Y. 1965-67
24. Davis Brody & Associates; Richard Dattner &
Associates. Estee Lauder Laboratories, Melville,
N.Y.1964-66
25. Perkins & Will; Robinson, Green & Beretta;
Harkness & Geddes. Rhode Island Junior College —
Knight Campus, Warwick, R. 1.1969-72
26. Douglas J. Cardinal. St. Mary's Church, Red
Deer, Alberta, Canada. 1965-67
27. Bernhard M. Pfau. Dusseldorf Playhouse, Diis-
seldorf, Germany. 1960-69

33
 Sculptural Form: Blank Boxes

The monumental building as a blank box used

to be thought undesirable, but during the last
20 years blankness has superseded trans
parency in the affections of architects. Cer
tain building types, like museums and labora
tories, would seem to require few or no win
dows, and yet the architect can still chooseto
place on a building's perimeter those activi
ties that will open it up and suggest the man
ner of use. (Visible escalators on the Centre
Pompidou are a good example; see p. 65.)
Alternatively, it may be argued that a mu
seum is a kind of strongbox and should look
like it, even if the look suggests that visitors
may be unwelcome. The argument is not
quite persuasive. It is just such public build
ings that represent community effort, invest
ment, and pride. They are not the best archi
tectural occasions to replace welcoming
speech with a blank stare.
Because surface decoration has been pro
scribed, unless it can be made to seem a by
product of the building process, even orna
ment is reduced to a matter of joints making
plaids and stripes. What is left to the
architect's preference is the grouping of simi
lar boxes, or the ingenious cutting and shap
ing of a single box, or, finally, modifying a box
so drastically as to change it to a complicated
figure resembling a long-legged table, like
Kisho Kurokawa's Fukuoka Bank (38); or a
table with legs on top as well as below, like
I. M. Pei's East Building for the National Gal
lery in Washington (33). Size and boldness
make such buildings impressive and some
times chillingly beautiful; always the quality
of materials and craftsmanship assume
great importance. Pei's East Building fasci
nates the eye as much by its superb masonry
as by the knife-sharp corners a triangular
plan imposes.
Apart from geometry there remains the
structural process itself as a means of
generating, or substantially influencing, the
character of even a blank box. Thus the hor
izontal stripes on Pierluigi Spadolini's exhibi
tion building in Florence (35) are not decora
tion: they are the result of building up a wall
with layers of metal trays.

28. Marcel Breuer and Hamilton P. Smith. Whitney

Museum of American Art, New York, N.Y. 1963-66
29. Edward Larrabee Barnes. Walker Art Center,
Minneapolis, Minn. 1968-71
30. Mario J. Ciampi, Paul W. Reiter, Associate;
Richard L. Jorasch, Ronald E. Wagner. University
Arts Center, University of California, Berkeley,
Calif. 1965-70
31. Bukichi Inoue. Ikeda Museum of 20th Century
Art, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. 1975

34
)x used
die last
trans-
s, Cer-
labora-
10 win-
oose to
activi-
e man-
Centre
p. 65.)
a mu-
ld look
dsitors
is not
: build-
invest-
: archi-
oming

m pro-
n a by-
1 orna-
naking
to the
)f simi-
1 shap-
gabox
licated
e, like
); or a
w, like
al Gal-
ldness
some-
juality
5sume
j fasci-
isonry
ngular

ns the
ins of
lg, the
le hor-
ixhibi-
ecora-
a wall

Whitney
33-66
Center,

jciate;
versity
•keley,

!entury

35
36 Sculptural Form: Blank Boxes
32. I. M. Pei & Partners; Pederson, Hueber, Hares
and Glavin. Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, N.Y.
1962-68
33. I. M. Pei & Partners. National Gallery of Art —
East Building, Washington, D.C. 1971-78
34. Marcel Breuer and Hamilton P. Smith. The Cleve
land Museum of Art, Education Wing Expansion,
Cleveland, Ohio. 1967-70
35. Pierluigi Spadolini. Exhibition Building, For-
tezza da Basso, Florence, Italy. 1975-77

37
 36. John Carl Warnecke & Associates. New York
Telephone Company Equipment Building, New York,
N.Y. 1966-72
37. Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, National Air and
Space Museum, Washington, D.C. 1972-76
38. K isho Kurokawa Architect & Associates.
Fukuoka Bank Headquarters Building, Fukuoka
Prefecture, Japan. 1971-75

38 Sculptural Form: Blank Boxes

ew York
ewYork,

I Air and

ociates.
Fukuoka
39
 40
A variant on the blank-box theme is the box
with a huge hole cut into it. The hole is there
not so much to relieve blankness as to capital
izeon effects of giant scale. The most obvious
way to do this, in a building type where it is
particularly effective, is to introduce two-
story-high windows in a facade otherwise
pierced only by monotonous windows of con
ventional size, as Edward Barnes did with
glass-walled two-story lounge areas in his
dormitories for the Rochester Institute of
Technology (40). Vertical buildings with
stacks of identical floors are much more dif
ficult to vary: Arata Isozaki succeeds with
his Shukosha Building because the program
allowed variation in ceiling heights (41).
More significant because more generally ap
plicable is Gordon Bunshaft's astonishing
tower to be built for the National Commer
cial Bank of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (39). An
equilateral triangle in plan, it has blank
perimeter walls sheathed in travertine. Two
of the three elevations are pierced by seven-
story-high loggias; seven floors of glass-
walled offices line their sides. The loggias
shield the glass from direct sun and provide
a local environment in the form of mid-air
piazzas.Seen from a distance the giant open
ings mediate between the scale of the tower
as a whole and the beehive of offices it con
tains, producing an image that reconciles
monumentality with humane planning.

39. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. National Commer

cial Bank (model), Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. 1977-
40. Edward Larrabee Barnes. Rochester Institute of
Technology Dormitory Complex, Rochester, N.Y.
1964-67/70
41. Arata Isozaki. Shukosha Building, Fukuoka City,
Japan. 1973-75

41
 Sculptural Form: Planes and Volumes

Brutalist mass and texture, and its minimal

ist variants, overshadow efforts to sustain
the prewar aesthetic of thin, planar surfaces
screening transparent volumes. That mode
of composition was once virtually synony
mous with the idea of modern architecture,
and yet attempts to continue it have taken
on the aspect of revivalism. The buildings
grouped here are by architects whose atti
tudes initially had this much in common:they
found in French and Italian architecture prior
to World War II intentions they believed still
valid and still susceptible of development.
Stripped of its original "revolutionary" im
plications of social reorganization, this archi
tecture depends on contrasts of planes
opaque and transparent, flat and curved, and
on rectilinear frameworks seemingly drawn
in space, against which plastic invention can
be freely deployed. In most of these build
ings, and with particular refinement in Rich
ard Meier's Saltzman and Smith houses (43,
46), internal space is both screened and re
vealed by the elevations. Many of these
houses include rooms two or even three
stories high, and the use of immense sheets
of glass to make their internal relationships
visible often results in dramatic extremes of
scale on the elevations and excessive light
within.
The style ranges from such relatively com
pact, simple, and prototypical buildings as
Charles Gwathmey's house for his parents
(45) to the extended sculpture-in-space qual
ity of Michael Graves's Benacerraf and
Snyderman houses (50, 51). The Benacerraf
pavilion, added to an existing house, is also
interesting for its juxtaposition of "frag
ments" evoking other kinds of buildings as
well as Cubist painting and Constructivist
sculpture.
Conspicuously different is Peter Eisen-
man's "House III" (48,49). This building com
prises two squares, as if one house had been
rotated inside another, the walls seeming to
pass through each other. The complicated
and sometimes disagreeable spaces this en
genders forces the occupant to "read" the
structure in order to sort out the parts that
belong to each square or system. The inhabi-

42. Gwathmey Siegel Architects. Tolan House, Ama-

gansett, N.Y. 1970-71
43. Richard Meier & Associates. Saltzman House,
East Hampton, N.Y. 1967-69
44. Richard Meier & Associates. Shamberg House,
Chappaqua, N.Y. 1972-74
45. Gwathmey and Henderson, Architects. Gwath
mey House, Amagansett, N.Y. 1965-67
46. Richard Meier & Associates. Smith House,
Darien, Conn. 1965-67
42
linimal-!
sustain
urfaces
it mode
lynony-
-ecture,
e taken
lildings
>seatti-
»n: they
re prior
fed still
lent.
try"im-|
s archi-I
planes |
ed.and |
drawn I
ion can |
; build-I
n Rich-I

y com-
ngs as
brents
e qual-
af and
icerraf
is also
"frag-
ngs as
ctivist

House,
44 Sculptural Form: Planes and Volumes
 tant is required to compare bits of informa
tion meant to imply the existence of a unity
that the actual field of perception contra
dicts, thus reversing the normal order of
architectural experience. The result is some
thing like a rigged intelligence test that the
subject can only fail, even if provided with
the "answers" in the form of plans, sections,
isometrics, and a printed text.
Apart from such special problems, the
more intricately Alexandrian such buildings
become, the more they demonstrate the
problematic nature of the original aesthetic,
whichis difficult to enrich without losing its
utility and coherence.

47. Peter D. Eisenman. House II, Hardwick, Vt.

1968-70
48, 49. Peter D. Eisenman. House III, Lakeville,
> Conn.1971-73
50. Michael Graves. Benacerraf House, Princeton,
N.J. 1967-70
51.Michael Graves. Snyderman House, Fort Wayne,
Ind. 1969-72
 Sculptural Form: Expressionism
The angularity associated with GermanEx
pressionist art of the twenties is for many
architects still an important alternative to
the more static geometry of Cubism. Under
lying such buildings is the intent to produce
form distinguished by its dynamism rather
than by its repose. Structure alone seldom
justifies such forms; function, in the sense
that a particular use may suggest an intensi
fied emotional response, as in a church, may
perhaps be sufficient reason. Nevertheless,
even though these buildings do indeed seem
charged with emotion, it is usually difficult
to understand what has prompted it or how
one should respond.
Hans Scharoun's Berlin Philharmonic Con
cert Hall is among the most successful build
ings in the Expressionist genre of the last
20 years (52-54). Its auditorium and public
halls are rather more persuasive than its ex
terior, where points, angles, and curves pro
duce a jaunty roofline oddly unrelated to the
banal windows. The combination of vertical
and inclined columns in the stair hall, along
with the complexity of the space itself, make
it an interesting background for the move
ment of crowds; but a comparable deploy
ment of space and structure in Giovanni
Michelucci's Church of St. John the Baptist
is difficult to relate to church ritual and
seems addressed to individual anxieties
rather than to the congregation (57).
This introspective quality is overcomein
Portoghesi and Gigliotti's Church of the
Holy Family, where a ceiling based on arcs
radiating from key points in the plan clearly
shapes the space in response to its signifi
cance (55). The Baroque and Hellenistic ante
cedents of this use of curves are more
apparent in Portoghesi's Casa Baldi (56),
where the advance and recession of the roofs
suggests a free-hand version of the Templeof
Venus at Baalbek.
Sustained restlessness is rather more diffi
cult to achieve in large-scale public housing
or multiuse buildings, but two examples
from France demonstrate its feasibility. The
Paris housing with its multiple cantilevers
and shifting pattern of windows has the look
of a twenties set for a German film —the kind
of film in which the world of tomorrow is seen
to be simultaneously organized, sinister, and
decadent (58, 59). German cinema may also
have influenced the extraordinary multi
purpose building at Ville d'lvry (60), one of
two similar projects. Tiers of apartments and
terraces cascading across its roof create an
Expressionist village in which Dr. Caligari
would have felt at home. Since this roof
landscape can be seen from adjacent tall
buildings, it can certainly be justified as
urban entertainment, and the exterior stairs
nan Ex-
r many
itive to
Under-
)roduce
rather
seldom
e sense
intensi-
2h,may
:heless,
id seem
difficult
or how

lie Con-
il build-
he last
1public
1its ex-
eTs pro-
i to the
vertical
I, along
[, make
move-
ieploy-
ovanni
Baptist
al and
xieties

ome in
of the
m arcs
clearly
signifi-
ic ante-
more 52-54. Hans Scharoun. Philharmonic Concert Hall,
i (56), Berlin, Germany. 1956-63
e roofs 55. Paolo Portoghesi, Vittorio Gigliotti. Church of the
upleof HolyFamily, Salerno, Italy. 1969-73
56. Paolo Portoghesi. Casa Baldi, Rome, Italy.
-e diffi- 1959-61
ousing
imples 57. Giovanni Michelucci. Church of St. John the
Baptist, Florence, Italy. 1960-64
ty. The
ilevers
ne look
le kind
is seen
er, and
ly also
multi-
one of
its and
ate an
aligari
is roof
nt tall
ied as
•stairs
47
 that connect many of the terraces contribute
to the suggestion of an intricate casbah in
which the occupants may happily lose them
selves.
The Expressionist impulse is not neces
sarily confined to points, angles, and curves:
it may also draw from Cubism. An example
ft/ I' is Fritz Wotruba's Church of the Holy Trinity,
p * <0 built of massive concrete blocks piled on top
* * (0 of each other in what is meant to look like an
almost random composition (61). In this
r church no single grouping of parts appears to
^ iin have been repeated; but a comparable effect
is achieved in the Israeli apartment house
>XVVVi through the piling up of a few basic units, al
most identical in design and placement (63);
and a comparable pyramiding of forms,
notched and undercut to make deep shad
ows, animates Walter Maria Forderer's St.
Clement's Church in Switzerland (62).
In these buildings the complex forms, how
ever pleasing they may be, are difficult to re-

58, 59. Martin S. Van Treeck. Multiuse buildings,

renovation of the Ilot Riquet, Paris, France. 1972-77
60. Jean Renaudie. Jeanne-Hachette multiuse build
ing, renovation of City Center, Ivry/Seine, France.
1969-72

48 Sculptural Form: Expressionism

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50 Sculptural Form: Expressionism
late to the occasions that call them forth. A
more convincing fusion of form and content
occurs in Gottfried Bohm's Pilgrimage
Church at Neviges, Germany (65, 67). Here
the mass of the building retains its unity as a
single sculpture —no doubt helped by con
tinuing the concrete wall surfaces on to the
faceted roof. The result is a brooding appari
tion, a ghost from the medieval past inex
plicably materialized in the midst of a
bourgeois townscape. And in the interior, as
in many of Bohm's churches, the modulation
of detail reinforces and articulates a central,
overriding mood.

61. Fritz Wotruba. Church of the Holy Trinity,

Vienna, Austria. 1965-76
62. Walter Maria Forderer. St. Clement's Catholic
Church, Bettlach, Switzerland. 1963-69
63. Zvi Hecker, Alfred Neumann, Eldar Sharon.
Apartment building, Ramat-Gan, Israel. 1961-64
64. Walter Maria Forderer. St. Nicholas's Catholic
Church, Heremence, Switzerland. 1962-71

51
 65, 67. Gottfried Bohm. Pilgrimage Church, Neviges,
Germany. 1965-68
66. Gottfried Bohm. City Hall, Bensberg, Germany.
1965-67

52 Sculptural Form: Expressionism

 Sculpture: Organic Form

Technology, one argument runs, should make

buildings that respond to our bodies like
clothing or protect them like shells. For some
architects this is possible only with "irra
tional" curvilinear forms which avoid right
angles. As interpreted by Frederick Kiesler,
such forms went beyond the merely irra
tional to the idea of architecture as a kind of
nurturing womb. He proposed houses whose
interiors would have been an extension of the
nervous system into a continuous warm sur
face. Alive with arteries for water and
energy, and glowing with light from enticing
tunnels and apertures, such environments
anticipated the ideal of "polymorphous per
versity" advocated in the early sixties by
Herbert Marcuse and Norman 0. Brown.
The 1960 version of Kiesler's Endless
House, commissioned by The Museum of
Modern Art for possible construction in its
--W. garden, used a warped concrete membrane to
make "rooms',' but introduced a violently tex
tured surface (68, 69, 71). This decisive
change from earlier versions moved away
from the polished surfaces of technology to
the gritty substance of mythological arche
types. Smoothness as an attribute of continu
ity still remains a theoretical possibility, as in
the dreamlike vistas designed in photomon
tage by David Jacob (70), who worked on
Eero Saarinen's TWA Terminal (17). But
most design in Kiesler's organic mode fol
lows his lead, if only because concrete
sprayed on twisted metal mesh tends to be
rough and to generate similar forms. Daniel
Grataloup's houses in France and Switzer
land are in repose, their detail small and
peculiarly intimate (72-74), but Vittorio
Giorgini's house in Leghorn stalks its site
like a dangerous animal (76). Charles Har-
ker's TAO Earth House looks crustacean and
slightly sinister (75), not unlike Herb
Greene's insectile sculpture of wood planks
and shingles (77).
Interiors in this kind of building seldom
equal the intense imagery of their exteriors,
68, 69, 71. Frederick Kiesler. Model for Endless
House. 1960
70. David Jacob. Photomontage-model of The Con
tinuous Room. 1960
72. Daniel Grataloup. Villa de Lyon, France. 1975-76
73, 74. Daniel Grataloup. Villa d'Anieres, Geneva,
Switzerland. 1970-72
 >•

56 Sculpture: Organic Form

partly because curvilinear continuity is com
promised by aggressive textures, flat floors,
furniture, and even the most minor use of
right-angled details. Harker believes that
organic sculptural form stimulates the indi
vidual's perception of wholeness, and he re
lates his work to Zen teachings. Gunther
Domenig encourages the release of crea
tivity on the part of construction workers,
who were free to modify some details of his
multipurpose hall for a parochial school in
Graz-Eggenberg (78). Domenig also believes
that multipurpose buildings need not be
"neutral" boxes: the concrete and metal
mesh shell accommodates a theater, confer
ence rooms, and dining areas in a presumably
functional shape, which stands free inside a

75. TAO Design Group: Charles Harker, Project

Architect, with Tom Lea, Evan Hintner. TAO Earth
House, Austin, Tex. 1971-
76. Vittorio Giorgini. Casa Saldarini, Leghorn, Italy.
1959-60
77. Herb Greene. Architect's house, Norman, Okla.
1960-62
78. Gunther Domenig; Eilfried Huth. Multipurpose
hall, Graz-Eggenberg, Austria. 1973-77
courtyard. Its effect on surrounding build is a 26-foot diameter spheroid made of 2-inch
ings might be considered enlivening by those polyurethane foam, sandwiched between
who do not think it disrupting. Improbable as layers of fiberglass. The upper and lower
such structures seem for anything more com hemispheres are each made in four seg
plicated than a house, their development ments, mechanically jointed and sealed, and
would be stimulated by other technologies reinforced by a steel belt. Entrance is by a
and, most of all, other intentions. Broader ac retractable ladder. Three spheroids perched
ceptance is not encouraged by anthropo on a hillside suggest an invasion from outer
morphic forms, even for private use. But space and could not fail to be popular with
characteristic alternatives now seem to de children. "Venturo" is a glass and plastic box
rive from product design and suggest the made in increments expandable from a basic
appliance department of a discount store. 22-foot square; its rounded corners defy
Yet these designs do imply a willingness to structural logic but frame the views some
equate "freedom" with something less idio what like a Chinese moon gate. U.S. manu
syncratic than self-expression. facture of both models was discontinued in
Charles Deaton's elegant streamlined 1977but may be resumed in 1979.
house appears poised for launching from the
ridge of a Colorado mountain (79). (Its fu
turistic look led to its use in the film Sleeper: 79. Charles Deaton. Architect's house, Genesee
Woody Allen sought refuge here from the Mountain, Golden, Colo. 1963-66
persecutions of tomorrow's advanced so 80. Matti Suuronen. Casa Finlandia "Futurol' Fin
ciety.) Science fiction is evoked more directly land. 1967-68
by the prefabricated shell structures de 81. Matti Suuronen. Casa Finlandia "Venturo',' Fin
signed by Matti Suuronen (80, 81). "Futuro" land. 1970-71
 82 Structure: Cages

In the fifties those who believed in the objec

tivity of engineering thought that Mies van
der Rohe's American work offered the best
guide to a rational architecture. Engineering
may indeed be objective and rational, but it
alsoinvolves disguisingaesthetic prefer
ences to make them seem objective. What
architects have in common with engineers
is not simply an interest in the value of struc
ture, but an underlying habit of thought:
architecture is seen as a tangle of problems
which must be sorted out, assigned priorities,
and systematically solved. Once found, the
solutions can be applied —or must look as if
they can be applied —every where. More
valuable than the result is systematic applica
tion itself.
The paradigmatic problem of architecture
as pure structure is simply a flat roof at giant
span; and the definitive solution is Mies's
Berlin Museum, with its 214-foot-square roof
of steel coffers carried by two columns on
each elevation (82). In manipulating this
theme the roof slab can be raised or lowered
on prominent or inconspicuous columns; can-
tilevered or supported at its perimeter;
thickened for structural or mechanical rea
sons; or even used as an attic. (Variations
prompted by "meaning" are discussed on p.
118.) Divorced from other design entangle
ments, its extreme development is the deep
space-frame spanning immense distances; at
Simon Fraser University the space-frame has
a transparent covering and shelters an open-
air campus center (86).
Some multistory buildings are simply
stacks of flat roofs, horizontality being
emphasized by columns kept well behind the
perimeter. At the Weyerhaeuser office build
ing, although it is difficult to tell from the
photograph, each floor slab is set back from
the one below (87). Because the columns are
placed on a grid diagonal to the building's
perimeter, each setback exposes another
range of columns out of alignment with those
in front. The structure has the abstract
purity of a diagram but yields an unex
pectedly animated effect.
Abstraction is reinforced by eliminating
metal frames around the glass, as in the IBM
World Trade Headquarters and the Design
Research Showroom (88, 89). Much of the
effect depends on maintaining transparent
corners; the Design Research building intro
duces some extra ones. Both versions also
depend on broad, unbroken fascias, but the
fascia may be used for decorative purposes.
At the Out-Patient Clinics in San Francisco
thin slabs extend beyond the glass and are
enlivened, on two elevations, by the exposed
ends of concrete joists (90): the dotted line

60
they make recalls comparable details in tim
ber architecture.
The horizontality of these multistory build
ings continues ideas developed in the twen
ties, or earlier, when horizontality was valued
because it expressed the strength of new
materials. Better still, it had no classical prec
edent. Today it recalls the precedent of the
twenties because the debate as to whether a
skyscraper should stress verticality or hor
izontality (or both, on different sides of the
same building) was temporarily settled in
favor of horizontality.
The natural resolution is a structural cage
in which horizontal and vertical elements are
equally apparent, but with horizontals domi
nating simply as a result of making the true
proportions of the cage visible. The BMA
Tower is an unusually abstract and probably
definitive version (91).Its cage stands free of
the walls; distinctions between columns and

82. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. New National Gallery,

Berlin, Germany, 1962-68
83. 1. M. Pei & Partners. National Airlines Terminal,
John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York,
N.Y. 1960-70
84. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Noxell Corporation
Headquarters, Cockeysville, Md. 1966-67
85. Arne Jacobsen. Landskrona Sports Hall,
Landskrona, Sweden. 1961-64
86. Erickson-Massey. Simon Fraser University,
Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. 1963-65
87. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Weyerhaeuser
Headquarters, Tacoma, Wash. 1967-71
88. Edward Larrabee Barnes. IBM World Trade/
Americas Far East Corporation Headquarters, Mt.
Pleasant, N.Y. 1971-75
89. Benjamin Thompson & Associates, Inc. Design
Research Showroom, Cambridge, Mass. 1968-69
90. Reid & Tarics Associates.- Out-Patient Clinics
Building and Parking Structure, University of Cali
fornia Medical Center, San Francisco, Calif. 1969-72

61
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beams are minimized, and both are sheathed Building, where perimeter columns vary in
in white marble. The proportions make just size and number as the building rises (93),
those horizontal slots Mies disliked, but and in Pittsburgh's U.S. Steel building, which
which he overcame by introducing a second consists of a steel cage in three-story incre
ary structure of vertical mullions, ostensibly ments with a second set of lighter steel
to hold the glass but in reality to assert the frames inside each section (96). A develop
preeminence of verticality. ment of some importance to the economic use
Chicago's Civic Center continues Mies' s of steel is the diagonal bracing seen on Chi
concern with structural articulation but ac cago's John Hancock building, which is more
cepts an even greater exaggeration of the happily distinguished by its taper (94). The
horizontal dimension brought about by new scale of the diagonals converts the building
high-strength steel alloys, which here in into an artifact of civil engineering, like a
creased the span between columns to 87 feet bridge, and produces unfortunate effects on
(92). Other ways of changing scale are seen interior space. More interesting is the cluster
in the University of Illinois Administration of nine towers for the Sears building, at 110
62 Structure: Cages
91. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. BMA Tower, Kansas
City, Mo. 1961-64
92. C. F. Murphy Associates; Skidmore, Owings &
Merrill; Loebl, Schlossman, Bennett & Dart. Chicago
Civic Center, Chicago, 111.1960-66
93. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Administration
Building, University of Illinois, Circle Campus, Chi
cago, 111.1962-65
94. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. John Hancock Cen
ter, Chicago, 111.1965-70
95. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Sears Tower, Chi
cago, 111.1972-74
96. Harrison and Abramovitz and Abbe. U.S. Steel
Corporation Headquarters, Pittsburgh, Pa. 1968-71
97. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Marine Midland
Building, New York, N.Y. 1965-68
98. Muchow Associates. Park Central Building, Den
ver, Colo. 1970-73
 stories currently the world's tallest (95).
Each tower is a tube 70 feet square, with
closely spaced perimeter columns. Rising to
different heights, the tubes make an asym
metrical composition of great interest, but of
course the same massing can be achieved by
more conventional engineering.
In the sixties attention gradually returned
to the design of the skin concurrent with the
design of structure. Economy prompted sim
plification, and one of the most important
solutions was found in 140Broadway in New
York (97). This building looks like a package
printed with two different kinds of black ink
—shiny and matte. Its flat surface has often
been repeated, with minor variations, and in
most of them the cage is a kind of ghost image
on a dark surface. Surprisingly, there have
been few attempts to vary the profile and
massing of the package itself, as is done in
the Denver office building (98).

At another level of structural design, the

cage is subjected to substantial dislocations.
When enthusiasm for structure is no longer
satisfied with abstraction and reduction, at
tention shifts to details of joinery and the
multiplication of parts. Thus the bones of
structure may assume dinosaur proportions,
or joints may swell like arthritic knuckles.
The opposite impulse toward structural elab
oration replaces mass with line, introducing
cables, pipes, and ducts. Probably the most
engaging example of this overscaled hard
ware is the Centre National d'Art et de Cul
ture Georges Pompidou, popularly known as
the Beaubourg (101-03).This building accom
modates museum, library, restaurant, and
performance facilities. Its structure com
bines cast-steel tubes and joints with tension
cables, leaving the interiors free of columns.
Corridors and escalators in plastic tubes are
suspended along the main elevation; the rear
elevation offers a display of ducts painted in
primary colors, suggesting a stylish petro
leum refinery. Unfortunately the tension
members contribute to low-level vibration,
and exposed ducts make the interiors diffi
cult to use as art galleries; but the structure
does achieve ingenious "problem-solving"
complications that would be lacking in a con
ventional steel or concrete cage.

99. Samuel Glaser Associates; Kallmann &

McKinnell. Government Center Garage, Boston,
Mass. 1966-70
100. William Kessler & Associates Inc. Center for
Creative Studies, College of Art and Design, Detroit,
Mich. 1971-75
101-03. Piano & Rogers; Ove Arup & Partners.
Centre National dArt et de Culture Georges Pom
pidou, Paris, France. 1971-77

64 Structure: Cages
66 Structure: Cages
105 108
The pure cage may be the clearest and most
logical of structures, but it is not necessarily
the most efficient and certainly it is no longer
the most interesting for architects to design.
Some of the alternatives can be divided into
three groups. In the first, numerous perim
eter columns are closely spaced to make
what might almost be a load-bearing wall, as mm
in One Shell Plaza and the World Trade Cen
ter (106, 107). In the former the concrete
piers are thick and thin, expanded and con
Wmimm
tracted in response to structural stresses.
Another variation, even more fine-grained
and evenly textured, is the wall designed as
a flat truss for the Pittsburgh IBM Build
i®*®
ing (108).
A second theme involves the clustering of
vertical shafts, sometimes for support and PifiE -jfi
sometimes for surface effect. On the Marina ''•uifiET
City apartment houses they are a graceful
surface modulation achieved by the repeti
tion of curved balconies (109).
A third motif deals with corners: four cylin
ders with floors suspended between them for
the Knights of Columbus building (105); or
the ends of a rectangular building treated as
pylons, with the floors stretching between
them, as in the Federal Reserve Bank of Bos
ton (104). Both versions dramatically alter
the petty scale and monotony of conventional
high-rise elevations, yet just this improve
ment has been criticized for introducing an
107
element of "gargantuan" scale. Undoubtedly
the use of this motif in the urban context is
disruptive, though perhaps to greater advan
tage than the pseudo-megastructure from
which it derives. At the same time what
might be its greatest advantage on a city
street— its usefulness in turning corners —
remains relatively unexplored.

104.Hugh Stubbins and Associates. Federal Reserve

Bank of Boston, Boston, Mass. 1972-78
105. Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo & Associates.
Knights of Columbus Headquarters Building, New
Haven, Conn. 1965-70
106. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. One Shell Plaza,
Houston, Tex. 1969-71
107.Minoru Yamasaki and Associates; Emery Roth &
Sons. The World Trade Center, New York, N.Y.
1962-75
108. Curtis & Davis. IBM Building, Pittsburgh, Pa.
1962-64
109. Bertrand Goldberg Associates. Marina City, Chi
cago, 111.1960-64

67
Structure: Cantilevers

Building's can be made to hover in mid-air,

span voids like bridges, or leap out of them
selves into space. The effects are sculptural;
the means are structural. The cantilever is
the essential technique for all manner of
structural excess.
Skyscrapers are the least likely benefici
aries of this kind of design, because canti-
levering requires massive core supports and
tends to reduce the amount of usable floor
space. An extreme development is the
Shizuoka Shinbun branch office (115),which
occupies a minute site at the intersection of
an elevated expressway and several busy
thoroughfares in Tokyo. Small units contain
ing offices are projected from a cylinder
(which contains utilities and an elevator),
and it is clear that the desire to cantilever
takes precedence over practical consid
erations. The building for the University of
Paris (116), on the other hand, engages a
similar theme but is obliged to accommodate
larger areas of usable space. The compro
mise is effected by a combination of concrete
shafts from which the floors are cantilev-
ered, but which remain largely concealed
from view, with adjacent concrete shafts pro
viding supplementary support and creating
the illusion that the glazed volumes are hung
from them.
Constructivist projects of the twenties are
recalled by two art museums and an admin
istration building (112-14). The latter uses
towers, approximately square in plan,
bridged at different levels and in different
directions by two-story-high square tubes.
These horizontal elements appear to be can-
tilevered beyond the towers, but are actually
suspended by rigid tension members. The
American art museum is less dramatic for
the technical aspects of its structure than for
its elevated plaza framed by the building
itself. This composition is meant to terminate
a vista, but its scale —as with most such
exercises—overwhelms everything around it.
The University of California Library (111)
employs cantilevered concrete bents like
those used for stadiums. The Spanish tower
(110) conceals its structure, rotating alter
nate floors to make projecting corners. Be
tween the bands of windows the space is filled
by warped surfaces that look as if they had
stretched like rubber as the floors were turned.

110. Miguel Fisac. Jorba Laboratories, Madrid,

Spain. 1965-67
111. William L. Pereira Associates. Central Univer
sity Library, University of California, San Diego,
Calif. 1966-70
112. I. M. Pei & Partners. Herbert F. Johnson
Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
1968-73
lir,
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is
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/er
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ate
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lled
aad
led.
113. State Roads Offices for Engineering and
rid, Administration, Tbilisi, Georgia, U.S.S.R. 1977
114. Arata Isozaki. Kitakyushu City Museum of Art,
ver- Kitakyushu City, Japan. 1971-74
ego,
115. Kenzo Tange & Urtec Team. Shizuoka Shinbun
Branch Office, Tokyo, Japan. 1966-67
ison
^.Y. 116. Andrault & Parat. University of Paris, Faculte'
de Tolbiac, Paris, France. 1971-73
69
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Structure: Design by System

Architecture conceived as the design of

structural details tends to follow a specific
pattern of development. Whether the struc
ture being designed is the system of primary
supports or the lightweight cladding, it is
developed from a single component. Once the
component is designed, the entire building
is designed —the component need only be
multiplied ad infinitum. Architecture then
becomes little more than the replication of
a detail.
Sometimes such components embrace
more than a single element, as is the case
with the window-walls of the Philadelphia
Police Headquarters (117). Here each stack
of three windows is a single precast con
crete frame, like a ladder or a perforated
pier, carrying the floor slabs. Walls on the
Arm Italia industrial buildings (118)are built
of comparable vertical elements, but here the
window pattern is varied to great advantage.
The Banque Lambert building in Brussels
(119) treats columns as sharp spikes or
prongs, extended below and above the floor
slabs. The BMW Garage (120) is based on
essentially the same idea, but here the fascia
of each slab is enlarged to make a massive
parapet, while the "columns" projecting
above and below are reduced to stumps.
The preceding examples are instances of
rational problem-solving arbitrarily in
flected toward sculptural qualities, which
may or may not be at variance with structural
logic. The intention has been to make struc
ture in some way "expressive" —but not
necessarily of a structural fact. Another
response within the parameters of problem-
117.Geddes, Brecher, Quails, and Cunningham. Police
solving treats the skin of a building like a Headquarters Building, Philadelphia, Pa. 1959-62
precisely machined industrial artifact, and
goes to some trouble to emphasize the 118. Angelo Mangiarotti. Arm Italia Factory, Cini-
sello Balsamo, Italy. 1970-72
resemblance.
Thus the metal panels of the Kiln Farm 119. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Banque Lambert,
building (121)look like the stamped sides of Brussels, Belgium. 1957-65
oil cans, or like panels on the tractor parked 120. Karl Schwanzer. BMW Motor Co. Employee
in front of it. Individual segments are Parking Garage, Munich, Germany. 1968-70
punched out to make windows whose 121. Derek Walker with Industry Group at Milton
rounded corners are an essential part of Keynes Development Corp. System Building for In
the pattern; round-cornered windows in the dustry (at Kiln Farm), Milton Keynes, England.
1971-72
Bronx medical facility (122) recall windows
on buses and trains, but remain architec 122. Richard Meier & Associates. Bronx Develop
tural. In the IBM building in Hamburg (123) mental Center, New York, N.Y. 1970-76
rounded corners are used to blunt the con 123. Dissing & Weitling. IBM Branch Office and Data
tours of a volume, rather than to generate Processing Center, Hamburg, Germany. 1973-77
an overall pattern, and suggest such large-
scale artifacts as automobiles and airplanes.
Here the whole is more than the sum of its
parts, problem-solving having been used to
make a preconceived shape.

71
 124
Structure: Glass Skins

The mystical properties of light and trans

parency, according to German enthusiasts at
the beginning of this century, would lead to
a glass architecture of literally redemptive
powers. More prosaically, Mies van der Rohe
noted (in connection with his 1922study for a
glass skyscraper) that the significant thing
about glass was the play of reflections, not
shadows, and so the curved walls shown in his
model (127) are meant to reflect each other
rather than respond to some functional re
quirement of the plan. The plan itself showed
no columns, the structure being of no great
concern to Mies at that time. But in subse
quent work it was the skeletal structure he
focused on, finally excluding almost every
thing else, and it was transparency, not re
flections, that helped to emphasize the reg
ular disposition of the structural cage. In this
context reflections have no advantage, and
Mies's most persuasive buildings are not his
skyscrapers, with their dark glass backed by
dark curtains or blinds, but those one-room
structures whose clear glass maintains total
transparency.
It has taken almost 50 years for architec
ture to return to Mies's earlier notions of the
primacy of surface, and this time the object is
to conceal rather than reveal. Tinted glass
has been widely used since the fifties to re
duce glare and heat load. Mirror glass for
buildings was first developed for the Bell
Telephone Laboratories Research Center
(124), at the prompting of Eero Saarinen and
his associates Kevin Roche and John Dinke-
loo. Glass can be tinted and mirrored, and
both kinds are now often combined, but it is
the technique of mirroring that has brought
to the glass facade a degree of abstraction
that is without precedent.
When glass was first used to make the
entire surface of a building —not just its
windows —it was held in place by highly visi-
72
ble metal armatures. More recently, how
ever, the desire to maintain perfect conti
nuity of surface has led to the refinement of
the joints, which now are made as flush with
the surface as possible and often with flexible
synthetics rather than metal frames. Sheets
of glass can also be fastened to each other by
metal clasps (125).
Glass technology, and the skill with which
it is used, varies from one country to another,
but nowhere is it more sophisticated than in
England —perhaps after all elegance comes
more readily to the English temperament
than Brutalism. An example is the Century
House building (126),a facade between other
buildings on a city street. Its assembly sys
tem, called Astrowall, is a commercial prod
uct which leaves little initiative to the archi
tect. At Century House the glass divisions
include a visible black gasket and, down the
center of each square, a nearly invisible hair
line where the glass has been butted and
sealed with a translucent joint.
Glass cladding systems have accelerated
the mass production of buildings whose de
sign is largely determined not only by the
manufacturers of glass and its assembly sys
tems, but also by developers and financial
institutions. An architect is scarcely re
quired. For the cheaper sort of building he is
expected to provide a decent entrance and to
see to it that the internal distribution of ser
vices does not interfere with maximum rent
able space.
The package quality of such buildings, and
the speed with which they can be designed
and built, is in some respects the fulfillment
of what was thought desirable in the twen
ties. It was then supposed that technology, if
properly mastered, could produce an archi
tecture so pervasive that it would become
an industrial vernacular. In those terms,
excellent work could be guaranteed simply
by following established procedures, while
refinements of design could be left to a few
specialists. In practice it is often just those
buildings that add nothing to the production

124. Eero Saarinen & Associates. BellTelephone

Laboratories, Research Center, Holmdel, N.J.
1957-62
125.Smith, Hinchman & Grylls Associates Inc. Archi
tects' office building, Detroit, Mich. 1971-72
126.Raymond J. Cecil. Century House office building,
London, England. 1973-75
127. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Model, Glass Sky
scraper Project. 1922
128. Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum. The Equitable
Building, St. Louis, Mo. 1969-71
129. Erickson-Massey. Canadian Government Pavil
ion, Expo '70, Osaka, Japan. 1967-69
130. Leonard S. Parker. Gelco Corporation Interna
tional Headquarters, Eden Prairie, Minn. 1974-75
131
process, and therefore look least designed,
that are the most convincing (128).
What is surprising is that glass itself, a
material inseparable from modern architec
ture, should be so retarded in comparison
with other materials and technologies. Glass
block, for example, although popular in the
thirties and forties, was abandoned by archi
tects because few companies were willing to
solve its many technical problems. Except for
minor variations, the same block designs first
developed 30 or more years ago are still the
only ones available, and architects today
sometimes use them to evoke a thirties aura.
Experimentation now takes place largely
in countries with more flexible production
systems.
The Japanese university building (132)
uses preassembled steel frames with small,
amber-colored glass blocks whose circular
centers recall the blocks manufactured in
France during the twenties and used by
Pierre Chareau and Le Corbusier. In Buenos
Aires several bank buildings and their inte
riors (133,134, inside front cover) are re
markable for their use of brilliant color: blue
for the Urquiza branch, amber yellow for the
decorative walls of the Condor branch, and a
glowing red-orange for the interior of the
Headquarters. This latter is a faceted glass
shell built inside an existing structure.
Floors, ceilings, and walls are all made of
glass blocks in steel frames, some of them
removable for access to concealed lighting.
An alternative to glass block was used in the
Hall of Science built for the 1964 New York
World's Fair (131). Here a continuous undu
lating wall is made of a concrete grid filled
with irregular chunks of colored glass.

131. Harrison and Abramovitz. Museum of Science

and Technology, New York World's Fair, 1964, New
York, N.Y. 1963-64
132. Fumihiko Maki. School of Art and Physical Edu
cation, Tsukuba University, Tsukuba Newtown,
Japan. 1973-74
133. Manteola, Petchersky, Sanchez-Gomez, Santos,
Solsona, Vinoly. Condor Branch, Bank of the City of
Buenos Aires, Argentina. 1971
134. Manteola, Petchersky, Sanchez-Gomez, Santos,
Solsona, Vinoly. Villa Urquiza Branch, Bank of the
City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. 1969

74 Structure: Glass Skins

 If-
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Mi

135. Schipporeit-Heinrich. Lake Point Tower apart

ment house, Chicago, 111.1964-68
136. Jose Antonio Coderch y de Sentmenat. Office
buildings, Barcelona, Spain. 1965-72
137. Harrison and Abramovitz. Phoenix Mutual Life
Insurance Building, Hartford, Conn. 1960-64
138. William L. Pereira Associates. Great Western
Savings Center, Beverly Hills, Calif. 1969-73
139. Arthur Erickson/Mathers & Haldenby. New
Massey Hall (model), Toronto, Canada. 1977-

Structure: Glass Skins

 The Willis Faber & Dumas office building is
the most sophisticated exercise in glass tech
nology yet seen (although it may soon be
rivaled by the flexible glass roof of Massey
Hall, 139). In many ways it is the belated
realization of ideas first put forward by Mies,
most obviously in its curved wall like a pali
sade following the contours of the site. Apart
from that configuration, however, it achieves
effects of scalelessness Mies renounced.
The wall is divided into facets, each facet
comprising six panels of glass. These are
bolted to each other with metal patches at the
corners. Each ribbon of six panels is sus
pended from the roof by means of a single
bolt and a metal clamp to spread the weight.
The joints are closed with a translucent,
flexible silicone sealant. Lateral stiffening is
provided by glass fins suspended from the
ceilings in flexible mounts. A damaged panel
of glass can be (and has been) unbolted and
easily replaced without affecting the adja
cent panels.
Other refinements of this building are
a roof covered with grass and a toplighted
central circulation area equipped with esca
lators, which, like other mechanical installa
tions scattered throughout the building,
rejoice in exhibiting their working parts.
The purity of the glass wall system is an
extreme development of Mies's "less is more"
philosophy. But once away from the glass,

m\\Y> that attitude is superseded by a kind of

laissez-faire , whereby separate systems —
for sound control, circulation, mechanical ser
vices, lighting— are allowed highly visible
presences but are seldom allowed to touch. It
is this additive character that makes the
building a three-dimensional catalog of in
genious solutions to problems of which,
otherwise, one might not have been aware.
Problem-solving replaces "expression'.'

140-44. Foster Associates. Offices for Willis Faber &

Dumas Ltd., Ipswich, England. 1970-75

78 Structure: Glass Skins

145

80 Structure: Glass Skins

Before the advent of tinted glass the alter
nation of solid spandrel and transparent win
dow made surface continuity difficult to
achieve. Dark glass increases reflectivity
and thus improves surface continuity; but
mirror glass achieves near-perfect continuity
because it eliminates any disruption from
within the building—at least until the lights
go on at night.
The aesthetic motive is the decisive one,
but the energy crisis has added economic
incentives favoring mirrored glass skins.
Such facades make no distinction between
window openings and the much larger areas
of solid wall that are often concealed behind
the reflecting glass. From within, the glass
is transparent, but the observer outside can
not tell which panels of mirror are in fact real
windows. Consequently windows may be
reduced in size, which reduces heating and
cooling costs, and may be placed without
regard for external appearance. The more

145. Cesar Belli, Partner-in-Charge of Design; Gruen

Associates. Pacific Design Center, West Hollywood,
Calif. 1971-76
146. 3D/International. Century Center Office Build
ing, San Antonio, Tex. 1971-72
147. Odell Associates Inc. North Carolina Blue Cross
and Blue Shield Headquarters, Chapel Hill, N.C.
1968-73
148. 3D/International. Century Center Office Build
ing #5, Atlanta, Ga. 1973-74
149. Shoei Yoh. Ingot Coffee Shop, Kitakyushu-shi,
Japan. 1977
 mm

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82 Structure: Glass Skins

regular the grid, the more abstract the eleva
tions. Perfect regularity results in perfect
meaninglessness, except that the whole con
veys an indifference to human presence most
people interpret as hostile. Moreover, im
perfections in the glass, and alignments that
can never be truly accurate, sometimes frag
ment the reflected image. The result is an
irritating display of failed perfection.
What makes mirror buildings so fascinat
ing is their combination of calculated tech
nique with accidents of light. Given the right
moment, they are even more photogenic
than other kinds of modern architecture. The
right moment usually occurs before or after
a rainstorm —or at dawn or twilight. High
noon on a cloudless day may be only blinding,
or dull gray: stormy weather is best, and
mirror buildings are perhaps most reward
ing in the open countryside. In town they
usually damage what they most depend
upon: the environment they reflect. And in
town they can be as unsociable as a conver
sation with someone wearing mirrored sun
glasses: when the other person's eyes are
not visible one feels at a disadvantage.
Although glass technology may develop
further —to explore color, texture, and trans-
lucency as well as reflections —at its present
stage architects have preferred to concen
trate on a building's shape. Clover leaves
(135,136), lozenges and ovoids (137, 138),
parallelograms, pyramids, cylinders, and
cubes proliferate and are all for the most

150. 152. Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo & Associates.

College Life Insurance Company of America Head
quarters, Indianapolis, Ind. 1967-71
151.153. Johnson/Burgee; S. I. Morris Associates.
Pennzoil Place, Houston, Tex. 1970-76
154. Peterson and Brickbauer Inc.; Brown, Guenther,
Battaglia, Galuin. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mary
land Inc., Towson, Md. 1970-72
part equally arbitrary. But is there some
thing wrong with being arbitrary? Or is it
only that extreme precision —objectivity in
its technological dress -implies a loftier pur
pose than the making of curious shapes?
The three modified pyramids for a life
insurance company (150, 152) are perhaps
a symbolically appropriate environment in
which to anticipate death: enjoying them,
however, depends in large part on the way
they change relationship as one moves
around them, an effect even more intensely
developed by the twin office buildings of
Pennzoil Place (151).These are works whose
shapes do not depend on glass. In many cases
glassiness is made even more startling be
cause the shapes derive from masonry archi
tecture. Thus the Fort Worth National Bank
(158), with its chamfered corners and its
sloping base, and the clustered towers of the
Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles (166)re
call the fortified castles Louis Kahn re
trieved for his masonry buildings (and for a
glass building as well, in at least one project).
Recall is also involved in the Hyatt Regency
Hotel (163, 164) in Dearborn, Michigan, a
building whose stepped rear facade in a
"dynamic" thirties manner is more interest
ing than its monumentally bland entrance —
and which anticipated the still more elab
orately busy massing of the Hyatt Regency
Hotel in Dallas (165and inside front cover).
Even when these forms do not remind us of
ancient history, they cannot escape the his
tory of modern architecture. But long low
buildings of dark or mirrored glass, unlike
skyscrapers, are less evocative of a historic
type from which they deviate. The Pacific
Design Center suggests to most people an
extrusion that could well have been even
longer, but the effectiveness of its length de
pends on simultaneously seeing the varied
profile of its end elevation (145).The Century
Center Office Building is rather like a carton
with one flap lifted (146). Actually this in
clined wall conceals a four-story-high space .«*• HI* ;
serving as lobby and corridor, overlooked by ill ill
the offices. Again, it is the end elevation that
makes the building intelligible. These con
figurations suggest that a building of reflec
tive glass can be made more interesting when
itis feasible to treat one elevation as if it were
a cross-section, disclosing something of its
internal organization.

155. I. M. Pei & Partners, Henry N. Cobb, Design ****?"

Partner. John Hancock Tower, Boston, Mass. 1967-76
156. Johnson/Burgee; Edward F. Baker Associates,
Inc. I.D.S. Center, Minneapolis, Minn. 1968-73
157. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Equibank Build
ing, Pittsburgh, Pa. 1973-76
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86 Structure: Glass Skins

 160

158. John Portman & Associates. Fort Worth

National Bank, Fort Worth, Tex. 1969-74
159. Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo & Associates.
United Nations Plaza Hotel and Office Building, New
York, N.Y. 1969-75
160.K. R. Cooper. Offices for Ontario Hydro, Toronto,
Canada. 1972-76
161. John Brunton & Partners. Europa House office
building, Hull, England. 1973-75
162. Curtis L. Beattie, Designer/Project Architect
with Chester L. Lindsey Architects. Fourth & Vine
Office Building, Seattle, Wash. 1973-75
 163, 164. The Luckman Partnership. Hyatt Regency
Hotel, Dearborn, Mich. 1972-76
165.Welton Becket Associates. Hyatt Regency Hotel
and Reunion Tower, Dallas, Tex. 1973-78
166. John Portman & Associates. Los Angeles
Bonaventure Hotel, Los Angeles, Calif. 1970-76

88 Structure: Glass Skins

 Greenhouses and Other Public Spaces
The building with a glass roof as well as glass
walls may be the type toward which modern
architecture aspires, but few architects have
had the opportunity to build it. When it does
get built it seems to require so much metal
structure that it looks like a steel cage rather
than a glass volume. This quality has been
deliberately emphasized in the Niagara Falls
Winter Garden (167,168), where several
levels of structural articulation are com
bined; it is minimized, or at least regular
ized, by the continuous space frame used for
the Garden Grove Community Church (170),
now in construction.
Greenhouse buildings can yield vast, light-
filled interiors in fulfillment of a nineteenth-
century dream. No Crystal Palace could equal
the fantasy of Buckminster Fuller's dome at
Montreal's Expo 67, or of Japan's Summer-
land recreation center (174), or for that
matter the more subtly internalized world
of the Deere & Company annex (172), an
office building whose lush gardens and in
tricate vistas make it seem like a private
community.
Competing with the public space as a
light-filled garden —on the model first de
veloped for the Ford Foundation (175,176)—
is an image related to the disquieting moods
of Expressionism, science fiction, and the
abiding Piranesian delight in places that
look, and may in fact be, slightly dangerous.
But no one visiting any of the astonishing
hotels designed by John Portman is in danger,
unless he misses his footing while staring
upward at the dizzying display of balconies,
elevators, bridges, canopies, sculptures, and,
in the Renaissance Center Plaza Hotel (182),
trees in tubs cantilevered from columns.
These hotel lobbies unexpectedly reintro
duced significant interior space as a com
mercially viable entity— indeed their very
extravagance has ensured their commercial
success. No museum or concert hall rivals
their lavish architectural incident. They now
constitute tourist attractions in their host
cities and are among the few buildings of the
last two decades that can claim to have a
genuine popular following. Portman has
made it clear that in certain circumstances
too much is barely enough ; the most dramatic
of his hotel interiors are counterparts of
Charles Garnier's Paris Opera, and enjoy a
comparable success.

167,168. Cesar Pelli, Partner-in-Charge of Design;

Gruen Associates. Rainbow Center Mall and Winter
Garden, Niagara Falls, N.Y. 1976-78
169. Ole Meyer. Bella Center, trade mart & exhibition
building, Copenhagen, Denmark. 1973-75
170. Johnson/Burgee. Garden Grove Community
Church (model), Garden Grove, Calif. 1977-
90
 169

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 Elements of Portman's rhetorical style can
be found in other kinds of commercial and
governmental structures. The Buenos Aires
Bank of London and South America makes
do with what must be one of Argentina's
most imposing stairs (180); the simple forms
of the open-walled but transparent-roofed
court in Mexico City's Government Building
are monumental, but ceremoniously calm
(181).
These are exceptional spaces, and to some
extent all such giant public spaces are excep
tional; yet one type may well become ubiqui-

171. Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo & Associates. Irwin

Union Bank & Trust Company, Columbus, Ind.
1966-72
172.Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo & Associates. Deere
& Company, West Office Building, Moline, 111.1975-78
173. Takenaka Komuten Co. Ltd. Design Dept.;
Thkao Kohira. Nagashima Tropical Garden, Mie Pre
fecture, Japan. 1967-68
174. Ishimoto Architectural & Engineering Firm,
Inc.: Kinji Fukuda, Project Architect, Minoru Mura
kami, Architect. Summerland recreation center, near
Tokyo, Japan. 1966-67

92 Greenhouses and Other Public Spaces

 *4-

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93
 tous and certainly has influenced other kinds
of buildings. The shopping center with its
glass-roofed street, like the greenhouse,
elaborates a nineteenth-century ideal. It is
in this extended rather than compacted kind
of space that modern architecture promptly
encounters its characteristic difficulty: the
invention of incident and the sequential
ordering of space when the program will not
afford, and the architect will not allow, any
fictive devices. We must then accept infinite
extension, relieved only by hanging plants
and ornaments (184), or we may be satisfied
with ducts and plumbing brought out of re
tirement to festoon the walls (183, 189).

175, 176. Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo & Associates.

The Ford Foundation Headquarters Building, New
York, N.Y. 1963-67
177..Johnson/Burgee; Edward F. Baker Associates,
Inc. I.D.S. Center, Minneapolis, Minn. 1968-73

94 Greenhouses and Other Public Spaces

 178. John Portman & Associates. Hyatt Regency
Hotel, Atlanta, Ga. 1963-67
179. John Portman & Associates. Hyatt Regency
Hotel, San Francisco, Calif. 1968-73
180. Estudio Sanchez Elia— Peralta Ramos, Bank of
London & South America, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
1961-66
181. Teodoro Gonzalez de Leon; Abraham Zablu-
dovsky; Jaime Ortiz Monasterio; Luis Antonio Za-
piain. Government Building, Cuauhtemoc District,
Mexico City, Mexico. 1972-74
182. John Portman & Associates. Renaissance Cen
ter, Detroit, Mich. 1971-77

96 Greenhouses and Other Public Spaces

183. Bregman & Hamann; Zeidler Partnership.
Toronto Eaton Centre, Toronto, Canada. 1973-77
184. Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum. The Galleria
shopping center, Houston, Tex. 1967-69
185. John Carl Warnecke & Associates; Peterson,
Clark & Associates. Hennepin County Government
Center, Minneapolis, Minn. 1968-76
186. Sachio Otani. Kawaracho high-rise apartment
house, Kawasaki, Japan. 1970-74
187. I. M. Pei & Partners. National Gallery of Art —
East Building, Washington, D.C. 1971-78
188. Cossutta & Associates. Credit Lyonnais
Tower, offices and Hotel Frantel, Lyons, France.
1972-77
189. Schoeler Heaton Harvor Menendez. Charlebois
High School, Ottawa, Canada. 1971-72

99
 Hybrids

Different architectural effects are normally

pursued separately, one at a time. When they
cross over and modify each other we expect
some effort toward unification. What is sur
prising is to see unrelated modes handled
separately in one and the same building.
Among the most interesting work of the
sixties is a multiuse building in Rome that
juxtaposes commercial space in a glass-
walled box with a topping of Constructivist
concrete beams and parapets for private
apartments (192). The contrast between top
and bottom is made even more emphatic by
their different alignments in relation to the
site, the lower half following the street while
the upper half contradicts it.
The design was ridiculed when it was first
published because putting one very different
building on top of another seemed absurd —
yet no one objects when two very different
buildings are placed side by side. Louis
Kahn's Richards medical center (193,196),
for example, juxtaposes blank brick shafts
with highly articulated glass and concrete
towers. In this and many other examples
what is admired is the contrast. But vertical
stacking evidently introduces psychological
problems.
However different the components of the
Roman building may be, they have in com
mon an essentially linear treatment. In the
Women's Hospital in Chicago (191), a glass-
walled box serves as a pedestal for a giant
concrete sculpture whose flamboyant curves
offer the maximum contrast, with no con
necting theme whatsoever. Another kind of
hybridization is achieved in the Columbus
Health Center (109), where two or three dif
ferent buildings appear to pass through each
other without losing their identities. These
variations are somewhat literal interpreta
tions of "pluralism',' and the theme is far from
being exhausted.

190. Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates. Columbus

Occupational Health Center, Columbus, Ind. 1969-73
191. Bertrand Goldberg Associates. Prentice
Women's Hospital and Maternity Center, and North
western University Psychiatric Institute, Chicago,
111.1970-75
192. Vincenzo, Fausto & Lucio Passarelli. Store,
office, and apartment building, Rome, Italy. 1962-65

100
 Louis Kahn

Louis Kahn (1901-1974) was a gifted and

benevolent teacher whose own architecture
matured relatively late in his career. At first
glance its formal aspects, rarely dominated
by any single preoccupation, may seem unre
markable. In its sometime pursuit of struc
tural design his work seems "modern"; in its
massing and use of materials it seems guided
more by memory. Kahn opened a door to the
past without engaging in historical revival
ism. He seemed to have taken modern archi
tecture apart and put it together again,
making it a more subtle instrument.
The Alfred Newton Richards Medical Re
search and Biology Buildings were perhaps
the most decisive and influential of Kahn's
work in the sixties (193,196). In them he
combined laboratory towers of energetic
concrete frame structure with brick shafts
used for mechanical utilities. The repetition
and grouping of these shafts, particularly
the closely spaced units on the rear eleva
tion, recall the castles and Romanesque
churches Kahn admired so much. Something
of the same embattled masonry character is
also suggested in his Unitarian Church
(194,195), but here corner elements on the
roof and the vertical slots are forms designed
to control interior lighting.
The Library and Dining Hall at Phillips
Exeter Academy are compositions of great
refinement using the simplest means, pri
marily the proportions and spacing of rec
tangular openings in brick walls (200-02).
The spectacular Library interior uses in a
structural form the circular openings Kahn
loved, but their monumental scale is con
cealed by bland elevations remarkable
chiefly for their corner entrances.
While the Phillips Exeter buildings make
no outward display of modern structural
technique, and although their predominantly
vertical fenestration may have Neoclassical
overtones, they move toward a timelessness
that seems no more attached to any previous
style than to modernism. The vernacular
nuances of the Dining Hall stop just short
of self-conscious archaizing; that quality be
gins to suggest itself in the Hostels for the
National Assembly at Dacca, perhaps be
cause their size and number combine to sug
gest what might be a fortified town, and
because the flattened brick arches used in
the Phillips Exeter Dining Hall are replaced

193, 196. Louis I. Kahn. Alfred Newton Richards Med

ical Research and Biology Buildings, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. 1957-64
194, 195.Louis I. Kahn. First Unitarian Church, Roch
ester, N.Y. 1959-63

102
197

by dramatic (and redundant) brick arches

used both to open the buildings and to pro
vide interior perspectives (197, 199). The
Assembly Building itself (198and p. 116)com
bines concrete walls with inset strips of
white marble; the attached mosque juxta
poses round, square, and triangular openings
in a manner at once abstract and mysterious.
With these buildings, still unfinished, Kahn
came closer than ever to an architecture that
transcends time and place, and is yet a
uniquely personal response to the circum
stances that shaped it.

197,199. Louis I. Kahn. Hostels for National Assem

bly, Sher-e-Banglanagar, Dacca, Bangladesh. 1962-
198. Louis I. Kahn. National Assembly Complex,
Sher-e-Banglanagar, Dacca, Bangladesh. 1962-
200, 201. Louis I. Kahn. Library, Phillips Exeter
Academy, Exeter, N.H. 1967-72
202. Louis I. Kahn. Dining Hall, Phillips Exeter Acad
emy, Exeter, N.H. 1967-72

104 Louis Kahn

 James Stirling

James Stirling's architecture, like Louis

Kahn's, is remarkable for its consistency.
More than other architects in the last 20
years Stirling has drawn on the industrial
vernacular and, to a lesser extent, on the
prewar history of modern architecture as
high art.
By now the most famous, and perhaps the
best, of his quasi-vernacular compositions is
the Engineering Building for Leicester Uni
versity (203, 206). Even after prolonged
examination it looks as if it really could have
been the work of engineers and other spe
cialists, some of them manufacturers of
windows and skylights. All the parts seem
to have been brought together without
regard for the final result, and yet the
assemblage is artfully harmonious, as such
exercises seldom are. Behind the fragile
mask of empiricism is a hard core of poetic
irrationality.
Some of the harmony derives from the
repetition of angled planes. The two audi
toriums cantilevered in different directions
are as rational as cantilevers can be; the sky
lights on the low wing (206, at the far right)
are quite reasonably turned 90 degrees to
face north, only incidentally generating a
lively perimeter detail. The awning windows
on the smaller block at the left, however, and
the offset columns at the base of the tower,
which produce an interesting buttress detail,
are explicable perhaps more readily in
aesthetic than practical terms. Thus the
offset columns allow an excellent opportun
ity to drape the glazing over the structure;
the awning windows sustain the note of
faceted angularity at a suitably smaller scale.
A ramp, pipe railings, and mandatory funnel
vary the industrial-nautical theme.
For the Engineering Building asymmetry
reinforces the look of unself-conscious im
provisation. It also produces a composition
that is picturesque in the eighteenth-century
sense of the term —and the photograph (206)
is taken from the viewpoint for which the
"picture" is composed. The History Faculty
Building at Cambridge uses glazing details
of industrial character but in a symmetrical
configuration, presumably meant to suggest
ptSBznBSfi institutional formality (204, 205). From the
outside the glazed lantern lighting the main
reading room might almost suggest a nine
teenth-century train shed; inside the glass
follows a different contour and rides rough
shod across the enclosing walls. The cascade

203, 206.James Stirling and James Gowan. Leicester

University Engineering Building, Leicester, Eng
land. 1959-63
204, 205. James Stirling. Cambridge University His
tory Faculty Building, Cambridge, England. 1964-68

106
of glass, in conjunction with ribbon windows
interrupted by projecting bays, produces
effects that are at once chaotic and delicate.
Less persuasive are the inclined walls and
external structural buttresses of the student
residence at Oxford University (207)but the
asymmetrical faceting relates the building
to its river site.
A different sort of industrial vernacular
is recalled by the Olivetti Training School
(208-10). Wall panels of molded plastic
(colored tan and pale yellow) and the finlike
projections on the roof of the central block,
which house movable walls, contribute to
the look of an industrial appliance. Unex
pectedly, the glass-roofed unit connecting
the various wings reverts to the sharp facets
of nineteenth-century industrial glazing
techniques. Sleek opacity and brittle trans
parency reinforce each other's qualities. As
in most of Stirling's buildings, each detail
is seized upon and exploited for effects of
scale. Perhaps this determination to expand,
rather than reduce, the possibilities at his
disposal accounts for some recent develop
ments in his work (see p. 164).

207. James Stirling. The Florey Building, student

residence, Queen's College, Oxford University,
Oxford, England. 1966-71
208-10. James Stirling. Olivetti Training School,
Haslemere, England. 1969-72
 Robert Venturi

The argument stated by Robert Venturi in

his book Complexity and Contradiction in
Architecture , published by The Museum of
Modern Art in 1966, claimed that modern
architecture has been handicapped by a com
mitment to the ideas of simplicity and con
sistency. In their place he proposed an
attitute toward architecture more consistent
with life itself, namely, that we learn to live
with contradictions. Moreover, where contra
dictions do not already exist we can invent
them.
Venturi distinguishes between buildings
intended to be of unique interest and those
that are best treated as commonplace; in his
own work he has been remarkably skillful in
incorporating references to modern building
styles previously noted only for their banal
ity. Guild House and the Dixwell Fire Station
(215, 212) are examples of design precari
ously lifted above the inept, ostensibly be
cause the original mode is thought to have
congenial associations for the occupants. The
building for the Visiting Nurse Association
(211) rearranges motifs from the more so
6 ENGINE phisticated reaches of modernism, but con
tradicts them by adding decorative moldings
to frame some windows. Moldings play a
more important role in the Chestnut Hill
house (214), where with pitched roofs and
an arched window they suggest, but only at
first glance, a kind of undistinguished subur
ban bungalow. In more recent work like the
Tucker and Brant houses (213 and p. 162)
references to historic styles fall somewhere
between the vernacular and High Art, the
Brant house in particular moving more forth-
rightly toward classical design.
Venturi's work reflects the loss of faith
in any single principle of integration, coupled
with an insistence on recognizing possibilities
modern architecture has heretofore largely
excluded. His ideas and his work have in
fluenced many younger architects, directing
attention toward isolated elements of design
and the sometimes rewarding associations
their novel rearrangement can generate.

211. Venturi and Short. North Penn Visiting Nurse

Association Headquarters Building, Ambler, Pa.
1960-62
212. Venturi and Rauch. Dixwell Fire Station, New
Haven, Conn. 1970-74
213. Venturi and Rauch. Tucker House, Katonah,
N.Y. 1974-75
214. Venturi and Rauch. Private house, Chestnut
Hill, Pa. 1962-64
215. Venturi and Rauch; Cope and Lippincott. Guild
House, Friends Housing for the Elderly, Philadel
phia, Pa. 1960-63

110
GUILDHOUSE
Elements: Windows

Orthodox modernism's guiding principle has

been the design of structure. As the author
ity of that aesthetic weakened, attention
returned to the design of nonstructural ele
ments and the enhancement of their unique
qualities. Doors, windows, parapets, and
roofs can all be manipulated with relative
ease, and the uses of the window best illus
trate how a single element can eventually
provide a new mode of organization.
The simplest way to enhance an opening in
a wall is to use an unfamiliar shape, or a
familiar one in an unexpected way, like the
square window Edward Larrabee Barnes
rotates 45 degrees, or his decorated half-circle
set in a niche (216,218). The revival of circular
wall openings is now associated with Louis
Kahn, who used them for monumental effect
(see p. 104). In Japan, where they recall inti
macy and tradition, Kisho Kurokawa has
equipped them with rotating blinds and
given them an industrial context (217,279).
The late Carlo Scarpa, on the other hand, was
a most subtle master of architectural trans
lation from the Chinese. His split-circle win
dow for a Gavina store and his elliptical win
dow in an Olivetti showroom are inflected by
his own sense of detail, giving these Oriental
motifs an Italian accent (220, 221).
These examples are confined to the wall
plane; Marcel Breuer's faceted frames for his
Whitney Museum of American Art project
the window beyond the wall so that it seems
to stare down the street (see p. 34). Breuer
and others have also used the frame for an
opposing effect: precast concrete panels to
make "blind" window-walls of insistent and
ultimately fatiguing pattern (228). Paul
Rudolph's Milam house (233)used the Corbu-
sian brise-soleil at a scale large enough to
imply a room behind each boxlike frame, ex
panding this element with the same exuber
ance recently shown by architects borrowing
from LeCorbusier's work of the twenties (see
p. 44).
For vertical buildings requiring small
openings, windows can be grouped in random

216. Edward Larrabee Barnes. Snell Music Building

and William Moore Dietel Library, Emma Willard
School, Troy, N.Y. 1964-67
217. Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates. Naka-
gin Capsule Tower hotel, Tokyo, Japan. 1970-72
218. Edward Larrabee Barnes. Cathedral of the
Immaculate Conception, Burlington, Vt. 1974-76
219. Mayuimi Miyawaki. Green Box House #2, Fuji-
sawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. 1972
220. Carlo Scarpa. Gavina Showroom, Bologna, Italy.
1960-61
221. Carlo Scarpa. Olivetti Showroom, Venice, Italy.
1957-58
 slots or evenly distributed as portholes. The
slotted walls in Piero Bottoni's City Hall tilt
forward at each floor, so that the inside wall
surfaces can be top-lighted (225, 226). Kazu-
hiro Ishii combines 54 windows of assorted
shapes (229); Hiromi Fujii cuts square win
dows into a wall to disclose another wall
behind it, with more windows of different
sizes revealing a third wall with still more
windows (231).

222. Carson, Lundin & Shaw. Manufacturers Han

over Trust Co. Operations Center, New York, N.Y.
1966-68
223. Harry Weese & Associates. William J. Campbell
Courthouse Annex, Chicago, 111.1972-75
224. A. C. Ledner & Associates. Joseph Curran
Annex Building, National Maritime Union, New
York, N.Y. 1963-66
225. 226. Piero Bottoni. City Hall of Sesto San Gio
vanni, Italy. 1966-70
227. John Carl Warnecke & Associates. Pacific Tele
phone & Telegraph. Co. Equipment Building, Oak
land, Calif. 1961-68
228. Marcel Breuer and Hamilton P. Smith. Becton
Engineering & Applied Science Center, Yale Uni
versity, New Haven, Conn. 1966-70

114 Elements: Windows

223 225 226

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116 Elements: Windows
 232

229. Kazuhiro Ishii. "54 Windows" house and

clinic, Hiratsuka City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.
1973-75
230. Louis I. Kahn. National Assembly Complex,
Sher-e-Banglanagar, Dacca, Bangladesh. 1962-
231. Hiromi Fujii. Marutake Building, Saitama Pre
fecture, Japan. 1976
232. Thkefumi Aida. Pension-style Hotel, Shiobara,
Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. 1975-76
233. Paul Rudolph. Milam House, Jacksonville, Fla.
1960-62
234. I.M. Pei & Partners. Des Moines Art Center
Addition, Des Moines, Iowa. 1966-68
235 Elements: Colonnade and Roof

Beginning in the late fifties many architects

favored closely spaced perimeter columns
and visible roofs as a means of giving some
sort of dignified presence to institutional
buildings. Other architects rejected these
motifs because the proliferation of columns
and the sometimes arbitrary development of
an attic floor, in lieu of a pitched roof, sug
gested classical yearnings they deemed senti
mental or banal. The evolution of these
related motifs follows no fixed schedule, but
at first their use was influenced by a certain
embarrassment in recalling historical prece
dents. Thus Oscar Niemeyer's President's
Palace in Brasilia turns an arcade upside
down (235). Stood on its head it becomes a
heavy base tapering upward to needle-point
supports for a thin flat roof. It is set right side
up again in Philip Johnson's Amon Carter
Museum of Western Art, but it is rigidly
encased as a frontispiece (236). In Niemeyer's
Mondadori office building, 15 years later, the
significant novelty is the rhythmically varied
spacing of extra columns (237). The concrete
structure has a conventional steel-and-glass
box suspended within it.
In the early sixties the projecting attic
floor with a frieze of narrow windows was
combined with columns flared at the bottom
and top. Because they are so thin such col
umns tend to look like congealed taffy that
has dripped from the underside of the attic
story. This effect is disliked by most archi
tects but is often appreciated by laymen, who
correctly interpret soft curves as signaling a
desire to please. The undisputed masters of
such beguiling effects have been Minoru
Yamasaki and Edward Stone (239,240). The
latter's Beckman Auditorium is an elegant
and exceptional example of the genre, being
round rather than rectangular, and with its
conical roof giving a graceful rather than a
heavy conclusion. Nevertheless, during the
sixties the heavy attic story emerged as the
decisive element, as if in response to criticism
that earlier versions looked flimsy. Some
European observers thought the popularity
of these buildings in the United States signi
fied a new, overbearing "imperial temple"
style, although Americans meant them to be
dignified and only welcoming, like John Carl
Warnecke's State Capitol at Honolulu (243).
Here the familiar ingredients are combined
with an atrium and gracefully curved outer
walls rising from pools. The design not only
extends the type to still larger and more im
portant public buildings, but also has been
regarded as regionally appropriate. This
building type was drastically modified by
Gordon Bunshaft for his Lyndon Baines
Johnson Library (244). Intending monumen-
tality (because people would enjoy it) Bun-

118
shaft discarded columns in favor of massive
sloping walls and an attic floor of heroic
structural dimensions. The result was seen
by some not as "imperial" but as "Pharaonic"
—a literary distinction prompted, perhaps,
by blank walls and the unremitting use of pol
ished travertine. Monumentality remains
problematic, reactions to it being influenced
by the way we regard institutions and public
figures. These variations on the colonnade
and attic motif, which begin with a concern
for distinction and grace, move quickly
toward a monumental scale disquieting to
critics if not to the public. They were in part
a reaction to the Brutalist style favored in
Europe, but their problematic nature leaves
architects still searching for a building type
suitable to the grand occasion.

235. Oscar Niemeyer. President's Palace, Brasilia,

Brazil. 1957-59
236. Philip Johnson. Amon Carter Museum of
Western Art, Fort Worth, Tex. 1958-61
237. Oscar Niemeyer. Mondadori Headquarters
Building, Milan, Italy. 1973-76
238. Wilson, Morris, Crain & Anderson. Heights
State Bank, Houston, Tex. 1960-62
239. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates. Northwest
ern National Life Insurance Co., Minneapolis, Minn.
1961-64
240. Edward Durell Stone. Beckman Auditorium,
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.
1960-64
241. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates. Woodrow
Wilson School of Public and International Affairs,
Princeton University, Princeton, N.J. 1961-65
242. Houstoun, Albuty, Baldwin and Parish. Mutual
of Omaha Office Building, Miami, Fla. 1965-68
243. John Carl Warnecke & Associates; Belt, Lem-
mon and Lo. Hawaii State Capitol, Honolulu, Hawaii.
1960-69
244. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (Gordon Bunshaft) ;
Brooks, Barr, Graeber & White. Lyndon Baines
Johnson Library, University of Texas, Austin, Tex.
1968-71

119
 Elements: Wall into Roof

For Western architecture the roof has seldom

been a decisive aesthetic element of composi
tion. The sense of shelter has usually been
conveyed by massive walls, which have also
been the chief recipients of ornament and
elaboration; even the Renaissance dome is a
wall turned in on itself. In our great churches
and palaces roofs do not overhang walls like
protecting umbrellas, as they do in Oriental
buildings. Modern architecture tended first
to keep roofs flat, when visible, and then to
eliminate visible roofs altogether. Current
anxiety over restoring a visible roof to the
skyscraper is somewhat belated, since exper
iments with the relation of wall to roof have
been going on for over 20 years. Not surpris
ingly, some of the most original are by Japa
nese architects, for whom a Western-inspired
wall-and-flat-roof architecture represents a
drastic break with their own tradition. Ef
forts to preserve a visible roofline usually
take their cue from the nature and material of
the wall itself. Thus, a concrete office build
ing in Tokyo is given a steeply pitched con
crete roof (245); a glass department store in
Stockholm has a glass mansard (247). Both
buildings remain "modern" by subordinating
the roof to the wall. More drastic are those
transformations whereby the wall as a ver
tical element is made to disappear entirely
(pp. 122-23), by being absorbed into a roof
which then seems to become the whole build
ing, like an A-frame vacation house or, as the
late Sibyl Moholy-Nagy once described it,
like an attic without a house. In the country
side such compositions make large buildings
seem more at ease, as if they were hills; in
cities they tend to take on the scale and pro
portions of pyramids, like Edgar Fonseca's
unfinished cathedral in Rio de Janeiro (250).

245. Tkkenaka Komuten Co. Ltd. Lapin d'Or Build

ing, Tokyo, Japan. 1969-71
246. Rinaldo Olivieri. "La Pyramide" commercial
center. Abidjan, Ivory Coast. 1968-73
247. Erik & Tore Ahlsen. PUB Department Store,
Stockholm, Sweden. 1956-60

120
 248. Sachio Otani. Kyoto International Conference
Hall, Kyoto, Japan. 1964-66
249. Herman, n Schroder, Roland Frey, Peter Faller,
Claus Schmidt. "Housing Hill" Marl, Germany.
1965-68
250. Edgar Fonseca. Cathedral of St. Sebastian, Rio
de Janeiro. Brazil. 1964-76
251. Bert Allemann, Hans Stuenzi. Weekend house,
Engelberg, Switzerland. 1966-67
252. Jacques Labro; Orzoni & Roques. Hotel des
Dromonts, Avoriaz, France. 1964-67
253. Justus Dahinden. Ferro-Haus office and resi
dential building, Zurich, Switzerland. 1968-70

122 Elements: Wall into Roof

 Elements: Parapets

Buildings designed in the Wrightian manner

with cantilevered terraces that seem to float
in the air have the effect of "demolishing the
box',' as Wright put it, because their varying
projections obscure the continuity of the wall
plane. For large buildings this requires more
cantilevered terraces than is practical:
nevertheless, the terrace and its parapet, and
the emphasis on horizontality they generate,
have never been altogether abandoned. It
should also be noted that of all modern motifs
this one is the most incompatible with his
toric Western styles, and hence the most dis
ruptive to the urban scene. Among the few
building types that readily lend themselves
to Wright's spatial conception is the open
garage and its spiral access ramp. The group
of four ramps at Seattle's airport garage sug
gests a collection of coil springs and may well
be the most exuberant of its kind (256).
Luigi Moretti's apartment house in Rome
is a rectangular block from which semicircu
lar balconies are cantilevered at slightly dif
ferent positions on each floor, giving the
building the animation of a flowering plant
(257). Ulrich Franzen's Alley Theater in
Houston uses parapets in gentle arcs, against
a massive blank-walled backdrop (258). On
very large buildings the consistent use of
such terraces generates effects that seem
almost geological, like Michel Marot and
Andre Minangoy's curved apartment blocks
in France resembling terraced mountains
(261); or obsessive, like the angled terraces
in William Morgan's Florida apartment
house where outside stairs add optical dis
tortion (262). Enrico Taglietti's motel in
Australia has rectilinear terraces canti
levered at all sides, but where the parapets
meet the corner is chamfered and extended
visually with a projecting beam like a down
spout (263). The sloping corners emphati
cally terminate the horizontals and evoke
Oriental pagodas, because each floor can be
read equally well as a roof.

254. Frank Lloyd Wright. Fallingwater, house for

Edgar Kaufmann, Bear Run, Pa. 1935-37
255. Paul Rudolph. New Haven Parking Garage,
New Haven, Conn. 1959-63
256. 259. The Richardson Associates. Sea-Tac Inter
national Airport Parking Terminal, Seattle, Wash.
1969-72
257. Luigi W. Moretti. "San Maurizio" condominium
apartment block, Rome, Italy. 1962-65
258. Ulrich Franzen & Associates. Alley Theater,
Houston, Tex. 1966-68

124
ALASKA BRANIFF
PWA NORTHWEST
CONTINENTAL SAS
WESTERN PAN AM
 260. Luigi W. Moretti; Fischer-Elmore Associated
Architects. The Watergate Apartments, Washing
ton, B.C. 1961-64/70
261. Michel Marot & Andre Minangoy. Marina Baie
des Anges, Villeneuve Loubet, France. 1968-78
262. William Morgan Architects. Pyramid Condo
minium Apartments, Ocean City, Md. 1971-75
263. Enrico Taglietti. Town House Motel, Wagga-
Wagga, N.S.W., Australia. 1962-64

126 Elements: Parapets

264 Elements : Earth

By the late fifties the sheer proliferation of

new buildings, good and bad, provoked ques
tions about why so many of them had to be
visible, especially when their utilitarian na
ture did not require architectural "state
ments'.' Why, for example, could not a ware
house be at least partly underground, with
its roof used for gardens and terraces? The
first efforts to design such structures were
prompted by aesthetics, rather than the more
recent concern with thermal efficiency. The
most important was the desire to avoid the
destruction of a site.
For Kevin Roche's Oakland Museum, the
only available site was a small park (264).
Roche successfully handled this large build
ing as a kind of landscape design —a terrac
ing of the park that both completes and
improves it. Bernard Zehrfuss's UNESCO
Annex in Paris is completely underground,
its offices opening on sunken courtyards to
avoid further obstructing a heavily built-up
site (265). Universities have been interested
in this approach when a new building, usually
a library, might damage a campus layout.
The sequestered garden, visible from above,
in Rhone and Iredale's underground library
for a university is the only "disruption" the
new addition causes (266). Not all such
buildings strive for total invisibility, nor are
they always underground : Ove Arup's office
building unexpectedly combines a densely
planted roofscape with the hard-edge geom
etry of steel-cage construction (267).
Sloping sites lend themselves to hemicycle
plans in which the roof can sometimes be
used as a garden promenade, as with
Olivetti's staff housing at Ivrea (268); or the
roof may be concealed under earth to leave
visible only a curved wall, like Hellmuth,
Obata and Kassabaum's fire station resem
bling a Chinese tomb (269). All these solu
tions retain elements of conventional ar
chitecture, but it is also possible to design
earth structures naturalistically rounded like
artificial mountains or geometrically
trimmed like mastabas. Geometric solutions

264. Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates.

Oakland Museum, Oakland, Calif. 1962-68
265. Bernard Zehrfuss. UNESCO Annex, Paris,
France. 1962-65
266. Rhone & Iredale Architects. Sedgewick Library,
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
1969-72
267. Arup Associates. Wiggins Teape office building,
Basingstoke, Hampshire, England. 1973-76
268. Roberto Gabetti & Almaro Isola. Olivetti
housing, Ivrea, Italy. 1967-68
269. Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum. St. Louis Fire
Alarm Headquarters Building, St. Louis, Mo. 1957-59

128
 seem more convincing architecturally when
their rooms open onto interior courtyards.
Naturalistic design is difficult to relate con
sistently to such mundane features as doors
and windows, but can lead to entertaining
variations like the openings of William
Morgan's Dunehouse (273).

270. Timo & Tuomo Suomalainen. Temppeliaukio

Church, Helsinki, Finland. 1960-69
271. William Morgan Architects. Hilltop Residence,
Central Florida. 1972-75
272. Thkefumi Aida. PL Institute Kindergarten,
Osaka, Japan. 1972-73
273. William Morgan Architects. Dunehouse,
Atlantic Beach, Fla. 1974-75

130 Elements: Earth

 Elements: Detachable Parts

Related to the preoccupation with mega-

structure (see p. 26) is the use of prefabri
cated components clipped on to a supporting
structure. Such components fragment archi
tecture quite literally into elements whose
manner of use is intended to imply change.
The most dramatic and fully realized ex
ample is Kisho Kurokawa's Nakagin Capsule
Tower, a hotel in which each room is a small
steel box equipped with bed, bath, desk, and
circular window, the latter said to remind
Japanese of bird houses (278, 279). Flexi
bility is the alleged practical advantage of
such systems: in theory the attachments
might be pulled off and reassembled in some
other arrangement, although it is hard to
think why. Most applications fall short of
Kurokawa's complete boxes, settling instead
for large sections of wall shaped to make
sculptural projections. Yoji Watanabe uses
large aluminum plates, together with a pent
house like a gunturret, to suggest a battle
ship (276). Fertility, rather than warfare, is
evoked by the planters hung from Gerard
Grandval's apartment house (274) like the
breasts on the ancient Greek representa
tions of Artemis (although some observers
are reminded of lifeboats). The point of such
strenuous efforts, notwithstanding their ra
tionalizations, is that uninteresting building
programs may be enlivened by novel combi
nations of a single unit of design. Some are
more persuasive than others.

274. Gerard Grandval."Les Choux" housing, Creteil,

France. 1970-74
275. Tatsuhiko Nakajima & Urban Science Labora
tory. Youth Castle in Kibogaoka Park, Shiga
Prefecture, Japan. 1968-72
276. Yoji Watanabe. Sky Building No. 3 apartment
house, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan. 1967-70
277. Andrault & Parat. Housing at Ste. Genevieve
des Bois, France. 1968
278. 279. Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates.
Nakagin Capsule Tower Hotel, Tokyo, Japan. 1970-72

132
 Vernacular:Roofs

Isolating the elements of design does more

than weaken those systematically "purist"
conceptions of architecture derived from
engineering and abstract art. It opens archi
tecture to the modest inventions characteris
tic of vernacular building, and vernacular
building opens architecure to history. Even
the cheapest house, for instance, can have at
least one unusual window, or a recognizable
roof. Windows are relatively easy to design;
roofs are more difficult and costly, but it is the
shape of a roof that most clearly signals the
undogmatic sympathy with the past implied
by the words "vernacular" and "regional'.'
For modern architecture the relation of
wall to roof is ambiguous and often problem
atic (see pp. 120-23). "Roofline','as we habitu
ally understand it, refers to the top of a wall
seen against the sky, rather than to the three-
dimensional roof itself. Varying the profile of
the wall, as Edward Larrabee Barnes did in
his New England school buildings, may or
may not evoke regional history through the
transformation of details: in these examples
the pitch of a roofline is determined by the
rotation of a square window (282, 283). Their
geometrically unalterable relation es
tablishes a kind of order; that Barnes intends
clear order, rather than the flexible profusion
of the picturesque, is equally apparent in the
systematic layout of his Haystack Mountain
School (280). And yet picturesqueness too
may be generated quite systematically, as it
is in Marot Tremblot's row houses at Am-
boise, where an increase of one story for each
unit makes the gable ends of their pitched
roofs read as dominant elevations (284).
Japan's contribution to modern architec
ture during the last 20 years is spectacular
and well known, but critical appreciation
rarely acknowledges the continuing vitality
of the Japanese classical tradition, in which
the roof is preeminent. It is a tradition that
accommodates lyric spontaneity, as in Junzo
Yoshimura's teahouse (286); or formal dig
nity, as in Isoya Yoshida's Matsushita Pa
vilion (285). Pitch and relation to walls and
columns provide the most direct means of

280. Edward Larrabee Barnes. Haystack Mountain

School of Arts & Crafts, Deer Isle, Maine. 1959-60
281. Abe Bonnema. Municipal Social Service Building
with apartments, Leeuwarden, Holland. 1972-75
282. Edward Larrabee Barnes. Boys' Dormitories
and Masters' Housing, St. Paul's School, Concord,
N.H. 1960-61
283. Edward Larrabee Barnes. Snell Music Building
and William Moore Dietel Library, Emma Willard
School, Troy, N.Y. 1964-67
284. M.T.A. Marot Tremblot. La Verrerie Housing,
Amboise, France. 1970-74

134
285
JL
varying roof designs; materials and texture,
and the relation of one roof to another, intro
duce useful complications. Visible roofs as
the determinant of form have been largely
neglected by modern architecture because
they have been thought unsuitable, or im
practical, for buildings larger than houses.
But the evolution of vernacular architecture
has addressed itself to just that problem. In
the last 20 years the scope of roof design has
been extended until it can deal with buildings
of almost any scale, including the skyscraper.
Among the first and most interesting at-
temps to organize groups of large buildings
as roof architecture was Ernest J. Kump's
campus for Foothill College in California
(290). The silhouette, varied in places, is a
hipped roof with a boxlike crown. The crown
replaces a ridge and is useful for housing me
chanical equipment. It suggest, among other
precedents, the Japanese irimoya roof (a
hipped roof modified by the insertion of a
small gable on the narrow ends) without
using any specifically Japanese details. Var
iations on Kump's design are now familiar
across the United States; the practical ad
vantages of the crown make this kind of roof
economical for commercial buildings.

285. Isoya Yoshida. Matsushita Pavilion, Expo '70,

Osaka, Japan. 1970
286. Junzo Yoshimura. Japanese teahouse, Rockefel
ler Estate, Tarrytown, N.Y. 1960-63
287. Hiroyuki Iwamoto. Yamamoto House, Ashiya,
Japan. 1963-65
288. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Chapel, Carmel
Valley Manor Retirement Village, Carmel, Calif.
1961-63
289. Huygens and Tappd, Inc. Private house, Con
necticut. 1969-72
290. Ernest J. Kump Associates; Masten & Hurd.
Foothill College, Los Altos, Calif. 1958-61

136 Vernacular: Roofs

M
 A church, an office, a library, and two houses
illustrate some problems and advantages of
roof design which does not automatically
communicate the nature of a building. The
church might be an unusually elegant market
hall; the office might be a house. Walter
Netsch's library is particularly interesting in
its use of an overhanging roof as if it were a
starched handkerchief draped over the walls.
The roof design of Peter Rose's ski lodge
differs from the others in that it is used to
generate a flat facade: pitched roofs on the
sides help to make the main elevation seem
like a section, as if the building had been cut
in half and only partially walled in.

292 291. Robert Maguire & Keith Murray. All Saints'

Church, Crewe, England. 1962-66
292. The Kling Partnership. Cargill Office Center,
Minnetonka, Minn. 1974-77
293. Norman Jaffe. Weekend house, Montauk, N.Y.
1974-76
294. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (Walter Netsch).
Louis Jefferson Long Library, Wells College, Aurora,
N.Y. 1966-68
295. James Volney Righter. Osborn House, New York
State. 1972-73
296. Peter Rose, Peter Lanken, James Righter.
"Pavilion 70" ski-area base building, St. Sauveur,
Quebec, Canada. 1976-77

138 Vernacular: Roofs

HI
 Vernacular roof design shades into formal
quotations from historic styles. In the early
sixties such allusions were construed as a
failure to toe the line of serious modernism,
either through weakness or frivolity. Some
times the allusions are made almost imper
ceptibly; sometimes with deliberate and clear
intent; sometimes with wrenching violence.
Richard Snibbe's elegant Tennis Pavilion at
Princeton echoes Georgian chinoiserie with a
"pagoda" roof and bracketed columns of tooth
'
M. W'M, "i'iWiVl!ll'l liWl
'illlil'i
Iw*iW.
1V1
liifflil
mr..SJL-' mWmM
pick delicacy (297). The eight shallow domes
of Philip Johnson's Dumbarton Oaks museum
Ri :**•:* are carried on massive columns and generate
sis Sail IB
the undulating elevations associated with
Hellenistic and Baroque architecture (299).
But the building's echoes are Neoclassic. Its
allusions are not attributable to any single
element, unlike those of the London Central
Mosque where removal of the minaret and
pointed dome would restore the building to
unremarkable modernism (298). Johnson's
undulating wood dome with no building un
der it (called the Roofless Church, 300)
stands in a walled garden and is more compli
cated still: its formality evokes a culture that
cannot quite be identified —is it Hindu, with
shingles? The overtones produced by these
buildings summon up the past; it is also possi
ble to use the past to suggest the future, or
at least a fictional anticipation of it. The
zooming roof of the Reiyukai Shakaden, a
Buddhist temple in Tokyo, appears to have
been built of layers thicker than any known
tile or wood shingle; its version of support
ing brackets is so extensive it almost obli
terates the rest of the building, like the mon
umental stair that fills the courtyard (301).
This building is a vernacular equivalent to
the science-fiction fantasies of plug-in archi
tecture (p. 132); like them it uses the "styl
ing" of product design to transform not tech
nology but a remembered craftsmanship.

297. Ballard, Todd & Snibbe. Tennis Pavilion, Prince

ton University, Princeton, N.J. 1960-61
298. Frederick Gibberd & Partners. London Central
Mosque, London, England. 1969-77
299. Philip Johnson. Museum for Pre-Columbian Art,
Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. 1961-63
300. Philip Johnson. Roofless Church, New Harmony,
Ind. 1958-60
301. Takenaka Komuten Co. Ltd. Reiyukai Shakaden
Temple, Tokyo, Japan. 1972-75

140 Vernacular: Roofs

 Vernacular: Roofs and Walls

The Matthew, Johnson-Marshall Hillingdon

Civic Centre houses government agencies
for a variety of social services. Because it is
much visited by the local community, the
architects were concerned with how the
building would be perceived. It owes its in
tricacy not to any inherent complexity of
accommodation, but rather to the architects'
decision to avoid a monolithic, impersonal
scale associated with bureaucracy. The
volume is divided into increments small
enough to be grasped by the eye but suffi
ciently varied to hold its attention. The eye
comes to rest on clusters of windows and
roofs combined to make units like small
houses, which the imagination fills with hu
man beings (presumably friendly). The re
duction in scale is reinforced by brick, shingle
roofs, and decorative detail. The internal
planning is perhaps too complicated, and
some of the external angles are awkward;
but the amiable intention is quite clear.
Something of the kind might have been
achieved with a less pointed evocation of Vic
torian busyness, but that characteristic sets
the building in its context.
Hillingdon is too artful to be taken as ver
nacular work, yet that seems as much its
character as not. A similar uncertainty oc
curs, at least for the observer, with Shizutaro
Urabe's Civic Center at Kurashiki. Its irregu-

302, 304. Robert Matthew, Johnson-Marshall & Part

ners. Hillingdon Civic Centre offices, Uxbridge, Lon
don, England. 1971-76
303. Shizutaro Urabe. Kurashiki Civic Center,
Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture, Japan. 1970-72

142
 lar shed roofs imply that their angles were College at Chichester uses massive concrete
improvised rather than composed. The blank lintels to carry its brick walls, some of which
wall is decorated with designs reminiscent of are offset to allow for glass toplights. Per-
those found on old warehouses and other haps it is the brick that rescues this building
folk architecture, and in that context the from Brutalism of the proletarian stained-
building conveys a vernacular informality. concrete variety; here the blocklike forms
In England this middle ground between evoke Cistercian austerities -and perhaps
high art and the vernacular has been ex- the excitement of defense against armed at-
plored with great success. Some of the most tack,
persuasive work in this manner seems
prompted by survivals from the medieval
past: stone walls whose roofs have vanished, 305. Roy Stoutand Patrick Litchfield. Private house,
castles, barns. The house at Shipton-under- Shipton-under-Wychwood,England. 1961-64
Wychwood consists of five separate small 306 Ahrends Burton & Koralek. Residential build-
buildings grouped around a pond —some of ing, Chichester Theological College, Chichester,
the stone walls rise from the water. Each roof England. 1962-68
is pitched at a slightly different angle and 307. Edward Cullinanwith Julian Bicknelland -Julyan
reinforces the perspectives set up by the Wickham.Centre for Advanced Study in the Devel-
casual grouping of walls. The Theological opmentalSciences,Minster Lovell,England. 1965-69

144 Vernacular: Roofs and Walls

145
 Vernacular:Instant Village

Some part of the success English architects

have had with what looks like a vernacular
may be due to experience in preserving and
adding to the real thing. The Millburngate
Shopping Centre in Durham (opposite the
Cathedral) uses brick and Welsh slate to
blend with other buildings so thoroughly
it can barely be distinguished from its sur
roundings. That is a rare circumstance in
which accommodation to existing scales and
materials is imposed. Rarer still is the effort
to transform a modern theme associated with
megastructure, or other versions of the gar
gantuan, into something rich with the local
scale and incident of the picturesque, as
Ralph Erskine has done with his Byker hous
ing at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Timber, brick,
concrete, the changing roofline, and the canti-
levered balconies, some of them with arbors
or shed roofs, make this immense work look
as if people had been improvising lean-tos
against a stretch of the Roman wall.
Nothing quite comparable is to be found in
the United States; our versions of the instant

308. Building Design Partnership. Millburngate

Shopping Centre, Durham City, England. 1972-76
309. 311. Ralph Erskines Arkitektkontor AB. Byker
Redevelopment housing, Newcastle-upon-
Tyne, England. 1969-
310. Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull, Whitaker. Sea Ranch
Condominium vacation houses, Sonoma County,
Calif. 1963-65

146
312
village clearly rejoice in the grouping of sepa ing the stepped roofs of small houses in one
rate buildings. Charles Moore's Sea Ranch continuous stretch, is Marot and Tremblot's
houses (310)were recognized, as soon as they row housing in Amboise (315and p. 135).
were built, as epitomizing the American re
sponse to preserving the environment, to 312. Killingsworth, Brady & Associates. Elkhorn
community with privacy, and to the idea of Vacation Condominiums and Village Center, Sun
the good but simple life. Simplicity here bor Valley, Idaho. 1971-73
ders on the earnestly primitive, redeemed by 313. Associated Architects of Colorado, William C.
a certain tongue-in-cheek humor (qualities to Muchow/Partner in Charge. Engineering Sciences
which students may have been responding Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colo. 1963-65
when they dubbed the style "mine-shaft mod 314. Ernest J. Kump Associates; Berger-Kelley-
ern"). Other American versions range from Unteed-Scaggs & Associates. Parkland College,
holiday resorts comprising dozens of build Champaign, 111.1969-73
ings (312)to school blocks made to look like 315. M.T.A. Marot Tremblot. La Verrerie Housing,
dozens of buildings (313). A hybrid, combin Amboise, France. 1970-74

313

111(1

* * ste

148 Vernacular: Instant Village

 The goal of owning a private house remains
the undoubted preference of most Ameri
cans. Modern houses are now provided by
some developers and their architects with a
skill that has improved conspicuously. In
large part this improvement is due to the
imposition of marketing techniques on archi
tecture. The size, shapes, materials, and de
tails, and the amount of space between
houses, are determined by analysis of con
sumer expectations, graded according to dif
ferences in income level. Once he knows your
income the developer can predict your taste.
Everything is factored into the equation, in
cluding art and sentiment, and the result is
better than most architectural critics are pre
pared to believe. The process arouses the
same critical hostility as the manipulative-
ness of Disneyland; yet the "product" pleases
people —many of them intelligent —and
seems to achieve systematically what else
where is the occasional result of inspiration
or exceptional talent. Among the most suc
cessful practitioners of this specialty are
Robert Fisher and Rodney Friedman. In more
than 20 communities they have evolved effi
cient, comfortable, attractive houses of ver
nacular character, enlivened by "features"
cheerfully borrowed from wherever they
come. This kind of architecture lacks only an
intellectual pedigree to make it eligible for
academic disputes. It is a defect that can be
remedied by pointing out that Fisher and
Friedman, like many others, have for some
time been practicing what Venturi preaches.

316. Bull Field Volkmann Stockwell. Venetian Gar

dens houses, Stockton, Calif. 1974-77
317. Fisher-Friedman Associates. Ethan's Glen town-
houses, Houston, Tex. 1972-76
318. Fisher- Friedman Associates. Mariner's Square
apartments, Newport Beach, Calif. 1968-69
319. 320. Fisher- Friedman Associates. The Islands
condominiums, Foster City, Calif. 1972-76

150 Vernacular: Instant Village

Vernacular:Details and Decor

Many motifs that are now part of a worldwide

common language have their origin in vernac
ular solutions to practical problems, and for
modern architecture the Japanese tradition
has been a particularly rich source. It still is
for the Japanese. Hiroshi Hara's small house
(323), with barely more than one room to
each of its three floors, adapts the formal
shoin style, where one might have expected
variations on the informal sukiya (teahouse)
style. Hara has kept most of the familiar ele
ments but transformed them by intensifying
differences between light and dark : the black-
lacquered woodwork produces vibrating con
trasts where the traditional style would have
ignored or minimized them. The X pattern on
the balcony railing, while not unknown to
the Japanese tradition, in this context looks
Roman.
A counterpart to the luminous paper
screens of Japanese architecture is used in
William Wurster's San Francisco townhouse,
where translucent glass walls enclose a gar
den (321). The grid pattern modifies Japanese
usage by stressing the vertical; part of the
wall curves around a stair; and the structure
is so delicate that the columns can scarcely be
distinguished from the glass frames. Harry
Weese's Engineering Center, Stanford Uni
versity (322), is a five-story timber-frame
structure. Its upper floors are walled with
narrow windows protected by sliding shut
ters. This kind of shutter is Western; the ex
ternal storage box it slides into is Japanese.
Red tile roofs and the abrupt change of scale
from upper to lower stories also help to
mingle the associations generated by each
element.
Here the design process is perceived as
skillful juxtaposition and modification, not as
the quoting of established sources usually
dismissed as eclecticism. That kind of quota
tion has been more acceptable to the modern
temperament when confined to transient de
cor: the stage-setting of a restaurant or a
showroom, for example, or the interiors of a
house. Alexander Girard's Western (saloon)
decor (327) made use of this exemption from
orthodoxy in 1958,well before the desire to do
so became widespread. By the early sixties

321. Wurster, Bernardi and Emmons Inc. Spreckels

House, San Francisco, Calif. 1956-62
322. Harry Weese & Associates. Frederic Emmons
Terman Engineering Center, Stanford University,
Palo Alto, Calif. 1974-77
323. Hiroshi Hara & Atelier. Kudoh summer house,
Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. 1976
324. David Roberts & Geoffrey Clarke. Wolfson
Court, Girton College, Cambridge University, Cam
bridge, England. 1968-71
pI
wjK' I f i ib
Charles Moore's Tuscan columns, making two
aedicules in the single room of his small house
(328), subtly altered the process : they are not
necessarily a joke. By 1972 Reichlin and
Reinhart's "Palladian" house (329 and p. 162)
addresses history without so much as a smile.
Something of the sort occurs also with quota
tions from the history of modernism: Giulio
Savio's interiors (325, 326) amalgamate ele
ments from Mackintosh and Godwin, de Stijl,
Japan, the Renaissance, and contemporary
graphic design. The method requires wit; the
result is solemn.

325, 326. Giulio Savio. Remodelled condominiums in

Palazzo Gaetani Lovatelli, Rome, Italy. 1968-70
327. Alexander Girard. Herman Miller Showroom,
San Francisco, Calif. 1957-58
328. Charles W. Moore. Architect's house, Orinda,
Calif. 1961-62
329. Bruno Reichlin and Fabio Reinhart. Tonini
House, Torricella, Ticino, Switzerland. 1972-74
Fragments: The Usable Past 333

Vernacular architecture is often funny be

cause of its "errors": carpenter's Gothic, for
example, or provincial combinations of Greek
and Roman details. Collage and assemblage
have brought sophisticated method to the
production of the improbable. Carlo Scarpa's
storefront for Olivetti, incorporating an ex
isting facade, exhibits the sensibilities of a
painter as much as those of an architect. His
added fragments realign and absorb those he
has found: it is impossible to say what "style"
this work represents, yet it is all style. Kimio
Yokoyama intends quite the opposite effect:
the Doric columns at the entrance to his mu
seum look as if they might have been brought
back from a European tour and reassembled
the wrong way —that being the point for a 334
museum. The taste for fragments leads to
their being invented, as with the fluted walls
and broken cornices of Marco Bardeschi's
vaguely Neo-Liberty house or the facade like
an unfinished jigsaw puzzle of scrambled
moldings on Vittorio Mazzucconi's office
building in Paris.

330. Carlo Scarpa. Olivetti Showroom, Venice, Italy.

1957-58
331, 332. Marco Dezzi Bardeschi. Private house,
Florence, Italy. 1962-63
333. Kimio Yokoyama. Fuji Art Museum, Shizuoka
Prefecture, Japan. 1971-73
334. Vittorio Mazzucconi. Matignon Building, Paris,
France. 1973-76

157
 Historicizing grounds. This produces the anomaly of West
ern architects rejecting the history of their
Conscious flirtation with history had begun own culture, but exporting paraphrases of
during the fifties, but at first the selection of other cultures to peoples who began by want
sources was limited by the fear of eclecticism. ing the alien style of Western technological
References to historic styles were acceptable modernism —and now are not sure what they
when they could be construed as by-products want. Twenty years after they were de
of objective, rationalist decisions, preferably signed, Minoru Yamasaki's buildings for
with some functional value; the architect Wayne State University in Detroit seem com
could not be blamed for historicizing if the patible with the present surge of nationalist
result happened to remind one of Gothic tra feeling in Iran, but in 1960 sophisticated
cery (335). The round arch of Mediterranean Iranian opinion would have rejected them as
history had already been absorbed into the patronizing.
modern canon through the work of Le Corbu-
sier; the pointed arch, which might well have
been equated with the radicalism of Gothic 335. Paul Rudolph; Anderson, Beckwith & Haible.
structure so congenial to modern theory, was Mary Cooper Jewett Arts Center, Wellesley College,
in practice limited to spans clearly too small Wellesley, Mass. 1955-58
to have structural validity (336). They were 336. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates. College of
too obviously a pretext for achieving an effect Education Building, Wayne State University, De
of delicacy. The effect was dismissed along troit, Mich. 1956-59
with the means. When the effect is more rug 337. Caudill Rowlett Scott, Charles E. Lawrence,
ged, as it has been in recent work by Western Principal Architectural Designer. University of Pe
architects in the Middle East (337), it can now troleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
be justified on cultural as well as structural 1966-71/

158
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160 Historicizing
 The modern building type considered least
vulnerable to historicizing has been the sky
scraper, but it too has been subject to reap
praisal. The multiuse program of the Tbrre
Velasca in Milan called for offices below and
apartments at the top third of the tower.
When Belgiojoso, Peresutti and Rogers be
gan to design it in 1957,their first response
was to differentiate the two functions by can-
tilevering the upper floors beyond the struc
tural cage and making the fenestration more
delicate (338). By the time they finished in
1960 they had rejected this design in favor of
a uniform pattern of conventional windows, a
projecting upper block supported by four-
story-high ribs, and a hipped roof sur
mounted by a boxlike crown (339). The justifi
cation was that this silhouette-was more
compatible with the character of the city: it
looked "regional" in that it reminded ob
servers of medieval fortifications, among
other things, but for the same reason it was
widely condemned by architects and critics.
Importantly, the historical associations were
defended as utilitarian and vernacular,; and
hence without frivolity or moral taint. Al
most 20 years later it is the pseudovernacular
aspect that might seem frivolous. Recent ef
forts, like the Bank of America's pipe-organ
clusters of San Francisco bay windows (341),
seem more relaxed —so much so that the
building has escaped condemnation for its
vernacular historicizing. (But that is also be
cause everyone likes bay windows.) Func
tional justifications and forms that avoid di
rect historical references are still the easiest
to accept: the Credit Lyonnais office-hotel
tower in Lyons (340) has a pyramidal roof
whose silhouette is compatible with older
buildings; it is transparent and lights an
interior court (see p. 99). What remains
shocking—this year—is a visible roof that
refers to a specific historical style and has no
function at all, except to be seen. Philip
Johnson's tower for AT&T in New York (342)
provides this visibility with a broken pedi
ment of Neoclassical provenance, and offers
similar but less flamboyantly historical refer
ences at street level. Ten years from now it
will be interesting to see if this building
seems only a straightforward but modest
step in the process of retrieving the past, and
not so decisive a rejection of modernism.

338, 339. Belgiojoso, Peresutti, Rogers. Torre

Velasca, Milan, Italy. 1957-60
340. Cossutta & Associates. Credit Lyonnais
Tower, Lyons, France. 1972-77
341. Wurster, Bernardi and Emmons Inc.; Skidmore,
Owings & Merrill. Bank of America World Headquar
ters, San Francisco, Calif. 1965-69
342. Johnson/Burgee; Simmons Architects. AT&T
Corporate Headquarters (model), New York, N.Y.
1977-

161
 Although it aroused no great controversy at
the time, a classicizing predecessor to Philip
Johnson's AT&T building was his addition to
the Boston Public Library (343). Designed in
1965 and completed in 1973, its plan of nine
square bays with massive piers at each
corner echoes his 1963Dumbarton Oaks mu
seum (p. 140).The arches are not structural —
floors are suspended from roof trusses —and
the scale of the component parts recalls the
giantism associated with Ledoux and Boullee
(those eighteenth-century masters of
stripped classical form whose works may yet
become a primary source of inspiration for
modern architecture in its present historiciz-
ing mood). A centralized, nine-bay plan is also
used by Reichlin and Reinhart in their small
house (344 and p. 155). But where Johnson's
Library addition makes its classical forms
look structural, and to that extent "modern','
the Palladian formality of the Reichlin house
is modernized by eroded corners and a "sym
bolic" arch.
Comparable manipulations occur in the
treatment of moldings, and the round win
dow that breaks into them, in Venturi and
Rauch's Brant House (345, pictured in con
struction). Here Venturi's modification of
classical motifs is without obvious irony. The
forms are strong enough to survive his treat
ment of them; at any rate they read as if the
observer is meant to find them beautiful be
fore noticing anything clever.
Charles Moore's Piazza d'ltalia in New Or
leans (347) recalls collections of models and
casts seen in nineteenth-century photo
graphs of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Its pieces
of classical colonnade, polished aluminum col
umns and capitals, neon lights, and a pool
shaped like a map of Italy, together with re
lief sculptures of the architect spouting wa
ter, combine to advance the possibilities of
classicizing under cover of good clean fun.
Moore's memorial is without the slightly
sinister overtones of Ricardo Bofill's Monu
ment to Catalonia, a walled plaza on the sum
mit of a pyramidal slope (346). Twisted piers
of brick and ghosts of classical details contrib
ute to the air of ceremony for something no
one can quite remember. It is a quality or a

343. Johnson/Burgee; Architects Design Group. Bos

ton Public Library Addition, Boston, Mass. 1965-73
344. Bruno Reichlin and Fabio Reinhart. Tonini
House, Tbrricella, Ticino, Switzerland. 1972-74
345. Venturi and Rauch. Brant House, Bermuda.
1975-78
346. Ricardo Bofill; Taller de Arquitectura. "La
Piramide',' Monument to Catalonia, Le Perthus,
France. 1974-76
347. Urban Innovations Group, Charles Moore; Au
gust Perez & Associates. St. Joseph's Fountain in
Piazza d'ltalia, New Orleans, La. 1974-78

162 Historicizing
tone that apparently interests several archi
tects, as can be inferred from the arches and
columns of Michael Graves's Fargo-
Moorhead Cultural Center (349, detail) and
the serpentine barrel vault of Arata Isozaki's
Fujimi Country Club (350). Graves places an
exhibition hall on a bridge to join two towns
separated by a river: hence the symbolism of
the parallel arches slightly out of alignment.
Two buildings scheduled for construction in
1979 are of particular interest for the charac
ter of their historicizing. James Stirling's ad
dition to Stuttgart's State Galleries (348)
will have a pedestrian passage travers
ing the site, without interfering with mu
seum functions (the model shows the existing
building at the bottom left). This is provided
by a walkway that cuts across a gallery roof
and breaks into a circular, walled sculpture
court, affording pedestrians a view down into
it but no access. The walkway exits at the
opposite side to a ramp and the plaza below.
Recollections of the round, moated library of
 Hadrian's Villa, together with a monumental
ramp, distance this work from Stirling's ear
lier industrial style. Kevin Roche's suburban
headquarters (351,352) for a large American
corporation is U-shaped in plan, the central
wing being dominated by a rotunda, and the
arms reaching out to embrace a lake crossed
by a causeway. This classical plan is without
classicizing detail. The walls are to be of
white clapboard siding —aluminum, not
wood —introducing a cheerful domestic note
in what is in other respects a Beaux Arts
palace.

348. James Stirling and Partner. State Galleries

(model), Stuttgart, Germany. 1977-
349. Michael Graves. Fargo- Moorhead Cultural Cen
ter (detail), Fargo, N. Dak., and Moorhead, Minn.
1977-78
350. Arata Isozaki. Fujimi Country Club, Oita City,
Japan. 1973-74
351. 352. Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo & Associates.
Corporate headquarters (model), New York State.
1977-

164 Historicizing
 Erickson, Arthur 77 Kump, Ernest J., Associates 137, 149
List of Architects
Erickson-Massey 60, 73 Kurokawa, Kisho, Architect & Associates 39,
In the list that follows the numbers refer to Erskine('s), Ralph, Arkitektkontor AB 147 112,133
pages on which works are illustrated. Estudio Sanchez Elia-Peralta Ramos 96
Labro, Jacques 123
Faller, Peter 122 Langdon & Wilson, Architects Front flap
Aalto, Alvar 13
Ahlsen, Erik & Tore 121 Fisac, Miguel 68 Lanken, Peter 139
Ahrends Burton & Koralek 145 Fischer-Elmore Associated Architects 126 Lasdun, Denys, & Partners 22
Aida, Takefumi 117,130 Fisher-Friedman Associates 150, 151 Lawrence, Charles E. 159
Aillaud, Emile 5, inside back cover Fonseca, Edgar 122 Lea, Tom 56
Allemann, Bert 123 Forderer, Walter Maria 50, 51 Le Corbusier 10
Anderson, Beckwith & Haible 158 Foster Associates 78, 79 Ledner, A. C., & Associates 114
Andrault & Parat 69, 132 Franzen, Ulrich, & Associates 125 Lindsey, Chester L., Architects 87
Andrews, John 27 Frey, Roland 122 Lindstrom, Sune 5
Architects Design Group 162 Fujii, Hiromi 116 Litchfield, Patrick 144
Fukuda, Kinji 93 Loebl, Schlossman, Bennett & Dart 62
Arup Associates 128
Arup, Ove, & Partners 29, 65 Luckman Partnership, The 88
Associated Architects of Colorado 148 Gabetti, Roberto 129 Luder, Owen 19
Geddes, Brecher, Quails, and Cunningham 70 Lundy, Victor 11
Baker, Edward F., Associates, Inc. 85, 95 Gibberd, Frederick, & Partners 140 Lyons Israel Ellis Partnership 19
Ballard, Todd & Snibbe 140 Gigliotti, Vittorio 46
Bardeschi, Marco Dezzi 156 Gimenez, Edgardo Inside back cover Maguire, Robert 138
Barnes, Edward Larrabee 34, 41, 61, 112, Giorgini, Vittorio 56 Maki, Fumihiko 74
Girard, Alexander 155 Mangiarotti, Angelo 70
134, 135
Glaser, Samuel, Associates 64 Manteola, Petchersky, Sanchez-Gomez,
Beattie, Curtis L. 87
Goldberg, Bertrand, Associates 24, 67, 100 Santos, Solsona, Vinoly Inside front cover,
Bebb, Maurice H. J. 15
Becket, Welton, Associates Inside front Gonzalez de Leon,Teodoro 96 75
Gowan, James 106, 107 Marot, Michel, & Andre Minangoy 126
cover, 88
Belgiojoso, Peresutti, Rogers 160 Grandval, Gerard 132 Masten & Hurd 137
Belt, Lemmon and Lo 119 Grataloup, Daniel 54,55 Mathers & Haldenby 77
Graves, Michael 45, 164 Matthew, Robert, Johnson-Marshall &
Bennett, Hubert 20
Berger-Kelley-Unteed-Scaggs & Associates Greater London Council, The 20 Partners 142, 143
Greene, Herb 57 Mazzucconi, Vittorio 157
149
Gruen Associates 80, 90 Meier, Richard, & Associates 42, 43, 70
Bicknell, Julian 145 s
Bofill, Ricardo 163 Gwathmey and Henderson, Architects 43 Meyer, Ole 91
Bohm, Gottfried 52, 53, back flap Gwathmey Siegel Architects 15, 42 Michelucci, Giovanni 47
Bonnema, Abe 134 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig 60, 73
Hall, Todd & Littlemore 29 Milton Keynes Development Corp., Industry
Bottoni, Piero 115
Breger, William N. 32 Hara, Hiroshi, & Atelier 153 Group 70
Bregman & Hamann 98 Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates 100 Miyawaki, Mayuimi 112
Breuer, Marcel 23, 34, 37, 115 Harker, Charles 56 Moore, Charles W. 147, 155, 163
Brooks, Barr, Graeber & White 119 Harkness & Geddes 32 Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull, Whitaker 147
Brown, A. Page 15 Harrison and Abramovitz 74, 77 Moretti, Luigi W. 125, 126
Brown, Guenther, Battaglia, Galuin 83 Harrison and Abramovitz and Abbe 62 Morgan, William, Architects 127, 130, 131
Brunton, John, & Partners 87 Hecker, Zvi 51 Morris, S. I., Associates 82, 83
Building Design Partnership 146 Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum 38, 73, 98, 129 M.T.A. Marot Tremblot Architects 135, 149
Bull Field Volkmann Stockwell 150 Hintner, Evan 56 Muchow, William C. 148
Hodgkinson, Patrick 20 Muchow Associates 63
Bunshaft, Gordon 40, 119
Houstoun, Albuty, Baldwin and Parish 119 Murakami, Minoru 93
Cardinal, Douglas J. 33 Huth, Eilfried 57 Murphy, C. F., Associates 62
Carson, Lundin & Shaw 114 Huygens and Tappe, Inc. 136 Murray, Keith 138
Casson Conder & Partners 30
Inoue, Bukichi 35 Nakajima,Tatsuhiko 132
Caudill Rowlett Scott 159
Ishii, Kazuhiro 116 Netsch, Walter 14, 138
Cecil, Raymond J. 72
Ishimoto Architectural & Engineering Firm Neumann, Alfred 51
Ciampi, Mario J. 35
174 Niemeyer, Oscar 118
Clarke, Geoffrey 153
Cobb, Henry N. 84 Isola, Almaro 129
Isozaki, Arata 41, 69, 164 Odell Associates Inc. 80
Coderch y de Sentmenat, Jose Antonio 76
Iwamoto, Hiroyuki 136 Olivieri, Rinaldo 120
Cooper, K. R. 87 Ortiz Monasterio, Jaime 96
Cope and Lippincott 111 Orzoni & Roques 123
Cossutta& Associates 99, 160 Jacob, David 54
Jacobsen, Arne 60 Otani, Sachio 98, 122
Crunden, J. 15
Cullinan, Edward 145 Jaffe, Norman 138
Johansen, John M. 25 Page & Steele 27
Curtis & Davis 67 Pani, Mario, Architect & Associates 4
Johnson, Philip 118,140, 141
Johnson/Burgee 82, 83, 85, 91, 95, 161,162 Papsworth, J. B. 15
Dahinden, Justus 123
Jorasch, Richard L. 35 Parent, Claude 31
Dattner, Richard, & Associates 32
Parker, Leonard S. 73
Davis Brody & Associates 32 Passarelli, Vincenzo, Fausto & Lucio 101
Deaton, Charles 58 Kahn, Louis 1. 102-05, 116
Kallmann & McKinnell 64 Pederson, Hueber, Hares and Glavin 36
Desmond & Lord 26 Pei, I. M., & Partners 36, 60, 68, 84, 99, H7
Dissing & Weitling 71 Kessler, William, & Associates Inc. 64
Ketchum, Morris, Jr. & Associates 30 Pelli, Cesar 80, 90
Domenig, Giinther 57 Pereira, William L., Associates 68, 77
Dyer, H. A., and Pedersen & Tilney 26 Kiesler, Frederick 54
Killingsworth, Brady & Associates 148-49 Perez, August, & Associates 163
Kling Partnership, The 138 Perkins & Will 32
Eisenman, Peter D. 44 Peterson and Brickbauer Inc. 83
Elgquist, Olle 5 I Kohira,Takao 93

166
 Peterson, Clark & Associates 98 Weese, Harry, & Associates 114,152
Pfau, Bernhard M. 33 F. Catala-Roca, Barcelona, Spain, 136
Wickham, Julyan 145 Martin Charles, Twickenham, England, 101,
Piano & Rogers 65 Wilson, Morris, Crain & Anderson 118 103
Portman, J ohn, & Associates F ront cover Wotruba, Fritz 50
86, 89, 96, 97 Louis Checkman, Jersey City, N.J., 170, 342
Wright, Frank Lloyd 124 Tom Crane, Bryn Mawr, Pa., 213
Portoghesi, Paolo 46, 47 Wurster, Bernardi and Emmons Inc. 152, 160
Pym, Francis 15 Creative Photographic Service, Jacksonville,
Wynnes, James C. 15 Fla.,271, 273
Reichlin, Bruno 155,162 George Cserna, New York, N.Y., 29, 83, 155,
Yamasaki, Minoru, and Associates 66, 118, 297
Reid & Tarics Associates 61 119, 159
Reinhart, Fabio 155, 162 Deutsche Luftbild, Hamburg, Germany, 27
Yoh, Shoei 81 John Donat Photography, London, England,
Reiter, Paul W. 35 Yokoyama, Kimio 157 121, 141,306, 348
Renaudie, Jean 49 Yoshida, Isoya 136 Giorgio Dugnani for Damns, 113
Rhone & Iredale Architects 128 Yoshimura, Junzo 136 Augustin Dumage, Paris, France, 116
Richardson Associates, The 124, 125 Charles Eames, 327
Righter, James Volney 139 Zabludovsky, Abraham 96 John Ebstel, Philadelphia, Pa., 193-95
Roberts, David 153 Zapiain, Luis Antonio 96 Gilles Ehrmann, Paris, France, 22
Robinson, Green & Beretta 32 Zehrfuss, Bernard 128 Bill Engdahl for Hedrich-Blessing, Chicago,
Roche, Kevin, John Dinkeloo & Associates Zeidler Partnership 98 111.,109
66, 82, 83, 86, 92, 94, 128, 165
A. Fethulla Studio, Hiki, Finland, 270
Rose, Peter 139 Photo Sources Lionel Freedman, New York, N.Y., 335
Roth, Emery, & Sons 66
Joshua Freiwald, San Francisco, Calif., 317
Rudolph, Paul 18, 26, 117, 124, 158 Photographs of buildings reproduced were, 318, 320
in most cases, provided by the architect or F/Stop Photo, San Francisco, Calif., 319
Saarinen, Eero, & Associates 28, 72 owner, to whom we are most grateful. The Alexandre Georges, Pomona, N.Y., 21, 178
Sakakura Associates Back cover following list, keyed to page number for the 179, 182
Savio, Giulio 154, 155 I ntroduction and to photograph number for the German Information Center, New York, N Y
Scarpa, Carlo 113,156 balance of the book, applies to photographs for 54,65
Scharoun, Hans 46 which a separate acknowledgment is due: Keith Gibson, Keighley, England, 308
Schipporeit-Heinrich 76 Photo Gramma, 221, 330
Schmidt, Claus 122 Introduction: Ken Grant, Santa Barbara, Calif., 138
Schoeler Heaton Harvor Menendez 99 AB Vagforbattringar, Foto Manne Lind, Julien Graux, Paris, France, 60
Schroder, Hermann 122 Sweden, 4 top Greater London Council, 4, 6
Schwanzer, Karl 70 ©Architectural Review, London, England, Russell Hamilton, H2
Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbott 26 (Colin Partridge and Jeffrey Taylor), 11top Hedrich-Blessing, Chicago, 111.,107, 135, 191,
Simmons Architects 161 Martin Charles, Twickenham, England, 15 top 223, 254, 322
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill 14, 40, 60-63, Frank H. Conant, M.I.T. Photographic Heinrich Helfenstein, Zurich, Switzerland,
66, 70, 85, 119,136, 138, 160 Service, Cambridge, Mass., 13 top 329, 344
Smith, Hamilton P. 23, 34, 37, 115 ©Walt Disney Productions, 6 David Hirsch, Brooklyn, N.Y., 283
Smith Hinchman & Grylls Associates Inc. 72 Nassos Hadjopoulos, 10 top Richard Hixson Photography, 316
Smithson, Alison and Peter 15 Alex Langley for Time, New York, 14 bottom Ilse Hofman, Briarwood, L.I., N.Y., 235
Spadolini, Pierluigi 37 Lautman Photography, Washington, D.C., Hubert Hohn, 26
Stirling, James 106-09, 164 11third and fourth George Holton, 300
Stone, Edward Durell 119 H. Madensky, Vienna, Austria, H second Yashuchiro Ishimoto, Kyoto, Japan, 248
Stout, Roy 144 William Maris, New York, N.Y., 15 bottom © The Japan Architect, Tokyo, Japan:
Stubbins, Hugh, and Associates 66 Stewart's Commercial Photographers, Masao Arai, 114,149, 186, 232, 272, 285, 303,
Stuenzi, Hans 123 Colorado Springs, Colo., 14 top 350. Mitsuo Matsuoka, 31, 217, 276, 278.
Suomalainen,Timo& Tuomo 130 Ezra Stoller, Mamaroneck, N.Y., 10 bottom Taisuke Ogawa, 275, 333. Other, 229
Suuronen, Matti 59 and 13 bottom J. Stewart Johnson, New York, N.Y., 102
© Ulster Museum, Belfast, Northern Tore Johnson, Stockholm, Sweden, 247
Taglietti, Enrico 127 Ireland, 15 center Kawasaki, Tokyo, Japan, 174
Takenaka Komuten Co. Ltd. 93, 120, 141 Balthazar Korab,Troy, Mich., 12, 82, 92, 100,
Taller de Arquitectura 163 Plates: 125, 163, 165, 190, 239, 241,336
Tamms, Friedrich U Agapa, Photo Cine Publicite, 246 Federico Kraft, 180
Tange, Kenzo 23, 28, 69 Erol Akyavas, 34 Sam Lambert, London, England, 3, 291, 302
TAO Design Group 56 Chalmer Alexander, 105 304
Thompson, Benjamin, & Associates, Inc. 61 Gil Amiaga, New York, N.Y., 11 Peter Lanken, Montreal, Canada, 296
3D/International 80, 81 © Architectural Review, London, England, Lautman Photography, Washington, D.C.,
307, 309, 311 262
Urabe, Shizutaro 142 David Atkin (Dev Reemer), London, Lehtilawa Oy, Helsinki, Finland, 81
Urban Innovations Group 163 England, 298
Libbey-Owens-Ford Company, Toledo, Ohio,
Urban Science Laboratory 132 Gaio Bacci, Rome, Italy, 35 151,156
Urtec Team 69 Morley Baer, Monterey, Calif., 30, 227, 243, Nathaniel Lieberman, New York, N Y
Utzon, Jprn 29 288, 310, 313, 328 25, 343
G. Berengo Gardin, 268 Michael Lyon, Austin, Tex., 75
Van Treeck, Martin S. 48 Roger Bester, New York, N.Y., 250 William Maris, New York, N.Y., 42, 293
Venturi and Rauch 110, 111,162 Hans L. Blohm, Ottawa, Canada, 189 Barbara Martin, St. Louis, Mo., 128, 184
Venturi and Short 110 Branko Lenart, Glaserwegs, Austria, 78 Laurin McCracken, 50
Virilio, Paulo 31 Brecht-Einzig, London, England, 2, 5, 204-07,
Norman McGrath, New York, N.Y., 24 47
209, 210, 267, 305, 324 167, 347
Wagner, Ronald E. 35 Bureau d'Informations d'Avoriaz, Paris, Joseph W. Molitor, Ossining, N.Y., 1, 88, 137
Walker, Derek 70 France, 252 201, 202, 216
Warnecke, John Carl, & Associates 38, 98, Orlando R. Cabanban, Chicago, 111.,93 Kaneaki Monma, Tokyo, Japan, 245
115, 119 Ludovico Canali, Rome, Italy, 192 Ugo Mulas, 339
Watanabe, Yoji 132 M. Capapetian, London, England, 203 Osamu Murai, Tokyo, Japan, 10, 115,132, 219
WED Enterprises, Inc. 6 Casali, 220 287

167
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y., Trustees of The Museum of Modern Art
68, 69, 71, 108, 127
Sigrid Neubert, Munich, Germany, 120 William S. Paley
Wim J. Van Neuve, 281 Chairm an of the Board
Minoru Nuzuma, New York, N.Y., 280 Gardner Cowles
Kiki Obata, St. Louis, Mo., 269 Mrs. Bliss Parkinson
Tomio Ohashi, Tokyo, Japan, 38, 279, 323 David Rockefeller
Richard W. Payne, Houston, Tex., 153 Vice Chairmen
Pascal Perquis, 274 Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd
Robert Perron, 13, 15 President
Courtesy Pilkington Glass Ltd., 144 Mrs. Frank Y. Larkin
C. P. Studio di Pinotti, Milan, Italy, 237 Donald B. Marron
George Pohl, Philadelphia, Pa., 211,214 John Parkinson III
Courtesy PPG Industries, Inc., Pittsburgh, Vice Presidents
Pa., 148, 164, 166, 242 John Parkinson III
Marvin Rand, Los Angeles, Calif., 145 Treasurer
John Reeves, Toronto, Canada, 16 Mrs. L. vA. Auchincloss
Reinhard-Friedrich, Berlin, Germany, 52 Edward Larrabee Barnes
© Retoria, Tokyo, Japan: Alfred H.Barr, Jr.*
Y. Futagawa & Assoc., 37. Tikitajima, 51 Mrs. Armand P. Bartos
Karl H. Riek, San Francisco, Calif., 290 Gordon Bunshaft
John Roaf Photography, Vancouver, British Shirley C. Burden
Columbia, Canada, 266 William A.M. Burden
Roberts and Associates, Minneapolis, Minn., Thomas S. Carroll
185 Frank T. Cary
© Cervin Robinson, 124, 200 Ivan Chermayeff
Inge & Arved von der Ropp, Cologne, Mrs. C. Douglas Dillon
Germany, 66, 67 Gianluigi Gabetti
Steve Rosenthal, Auburndale, Mass., 99 Paul Gottlieb
Bill Rothschild, Monsey, N.Y., 168 George Heard Hamilton
Oswald Ruppen, Sion, Switzerland, 64 Wallace K. Harrison*
Henry Rutter, Lyons, France, 188 William A. Hewitt
Hamid Samiy, 340 Mrs. Walter Hochschild*
Ian Sampson, 183 Mrs. John R. Jakobson
Oscar Savio, Rome, Italy, 56, 325, 326 Philip Johnson
Gordon H. Schenck, Jr., Charlotte, N.C., 147 Ronald S. Lauder
Ben Schnall, Hewlett Harbor, L.I., N.Y., 9 John L. Loeb
Simon Scott Photography, 86 Ranald H. Macdonald*
Julius Shulman, Los Angeles, Calif., 77, 289 Mrs. G. Macculloch Miller*
Malcolm Smith, 196 J. Irwin Miller*
Hank Snoek Photographs, London, England, S. I. Newhouse, Jr.
20, 126 (courtesy Astrowall Ltd.) Richard E. Oldenburg
Ed Stewart, Houston, Tex., 146 Peter G. Peterson
Ezra Stoller (ESTO), Mamaroneck, N.Y., 14, Gifford Phillips
17, 28, 32, 33, 39, 43, 44, 46, 84, 87, 89, 91, Mrs. Albrecht Saalfield
94-97, 106, 119, 122, 157, 175, 176, 187, 222, Mrs. Wolfgang Schoenborn*
233, 234, 236, 238, 240, 244, 255, 258, 286, Martin E. Segal
299, 341 Mrs. Bertram Smith
Hugh N. Stratford, Mountlake Terrace, Mrs. Alfred R. Stern
Wash., 259 Mrs. Donald B. Straus
Roger Sturtevant, San Francisco, Calif., 90 Walter N. Thayer
321 R. L. B.Tobin
Wayne Thorn, Santa Barbara, Calif., Ill, 166, Edward M. M. Warburg*
312 Mrs. Clifton R. Wharton, Jr.
Les Turnau, Minneapolis, Minn., 130 Monroe Wheeler*
UNESCO/R. Lesage, Paris, France, 265 John Hay Whitney*
H. Urbschat-H. A. Fischer, Berlin, Germany, *Honorary Trustee
53
© Serena Vergano, Barcelona, Spain, 346 Ex Officio: Edward I. Koch, Mayor of the
Ron Vickers Ltd., Toronto, for Pilkington City of New York; Harrison J. Goldin,
Glass of Canada, 160 Comptroller of the City of New York
Tohru Waki, Shokokusha Publishing Co.,
Tokyo, Japan, 41 Back cover: Sakakura Associates (Nishizawa,
Nick Wheeler, Townsend, Mass., 104, 218 Sakata, Nunokawa) . Gumma Royal Hotel, Mae-
Henry Wilcots, Philadelphia, Pa., 197, 198 bashi, Japan. 1972-75. Photo: Photography
Barry Wilkinson, Bradford, England, 161 Dept., Japan Architect
Lawrence S. Williams, Upper Darby, Pa., 117
Courtesy David Wisdom & Assoc., Black flap: Gottfried Bohm. Housing, Cologne-
Philadelphia, Pa., 199, 230 Chorweiler, Germany. 1969-75. Photo: Inge &
Ronald W. Wohlauer, Denver, Colo., 98 Arved von der Ropp
Leslie Woodum, Champaign, 111.,314
Inside back cover: Left: Emile Aillaud. Hous
Fritz Wotruba Archiv, Vienna, Austria, 61
ing, Nanterre, France. 1969-78.
Right: Edgardo Gimenez; mural by architect.
Jorge Romero Brest House, Buenos Aires,
Argentina. 1971-73.Photo: Humberto Rivas

168
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